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OUR SCHOOLS 

THEIR ADMINISTRATION 

AND SUPERVISION 



BY 
WILLIAM ESTABROOK CHANCELLOR 

SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, BLOOMFIELD, N.J. 



Dj«<C 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS 

1904 



UBRAHYof GONGRESS 
Two Copies K-sc8)vea 

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COPY 6. ' 



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" Perhaps nothing in the history of the world has 
ever been supported by a consensus of belief more 
universal than that vi'hich sustains education to-day. 
It has almost attained the semper, ubigue, et ab 
omnibus which the early Church strove for in vain. 
The world goes to school." 

— G. Stanley Hall. 



Copyright, 1904, by 
WM. E. CHANCELLOR. 



All rights reserved. 



^ 

V 



To 

Cljarleg jfranfelin ^rijtotns 

A witness of the light that shineth ever more and more 
unto the pe7'fect day 



*' But to the spirit select there is no choice ,* 
He cannot say, This will I do, or that, 
For the cheap means putting Heaven'' s ends in pawn, 
And bartering his bleak rocks, the freehold stern 
Of destines first-born, for smoother fields 
That yield no crop of self-denying will ; 
A hand is stretched to him from out the dark, 
Which grasping without question, he is led 
Where there is work that he must do for God. 
****** 

Chances have laws as fixed as planets have^ 
And dis appoint menfs dry and bitter root^ 
Envy'^s harsh berries, and the choking pool 
Of the world'' s scorn, are the right mother-milk 
To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind, 
And break a pathway to those unknown realms 
That in the earth'' s broad shadow lie enthralled ; 
Endurance is the crowning quality, 
And patience all the passion of great hearts ; 
These are their stay, and when the leaden world 
Sets its hard face against their fateful thought, 
And brute strength like a scornful conqueror, 
Clangs his huge mace down in the other scale, 
The inspired soul but flings his patience in, 
And slowly that outweighs the ponderous globe, — 
One faith against a whole earth's unbelief, 
One soul against the flesh of all mankind.'''* 

—••Columbus": James Russell Lowell, 



PREFACE 

With the growth of our schools in size and in number and 
with their development in resources and in methods, their 
organization tends constantly to grow more complex. Recently 
there has been differentiated from the teachers a class of school 
directors, administrators, and supervisors, whose function is 
management rather than instruction. These school managers 
see the schools from a point of view different from that of the 
instructors. So recent has been their appearance in the world 
of education that not only the general public, but even many 
instructors, do not yet understand the nature and value of their 
work. To present the subject of American education from the 
new point of view of the administrator and supervisor is the 
purpose of this book. 

In this treatment of school management, the subject is defined, 
not as the instruction and control of individual pupils and of 
classes and grades of pupils, but as the organization, mainte- 
nance, administration, direction, and supervision of schools, and 
the planning of schoolhouses. The book is designed for all 
persons interested in the control of schools and of school sys- 
tems, including superintendents, principals, supervisors, pro- 
prietors, members of boards of education, trustees, legislators, 
parents, taxpayers, and teachers or students preparing for the 
duties of school administration. Drawn upon these broad lines, 
the work is meant to promote teaching as a profession and to 
extend the knowledge of the principles upon which the profes- 
sional movement is proceeding. The treatment concerns the 



VI PREFACE 

smaller schools and school systems rather than the school affairs 
of the few great cities. The future of the educational develop- 
ment of our people depends upon the development of the 
schools of villages, towns, and small cities whose total school 
population is, and let us hope always will be, far larger than 
that of the great cities. The superintendents, supervisors, 
principals, and board members of the great cities are so few 
in proportion to the population that the smaller communities 
may be said to include ninety-nine out of every hundred of 
school officers. The great cities are under the direction of rela- 
tively few such officers. Many a school principal in New York 
or Chicago controls a school attendance equal to that of several 
towns combined. This volume is intended to be a thorough 
presentation of the subject of school administration with refer- 
ence to the smaller communities, while it is meant to be merely 
suggestive to those few experts who, usually after a successful 
experience in smaller systems, have been chosen to guide the 
policies of school administration in metropolitan communities. 

The book has been prepared for the school and for the pri- 
vate library, for teachers' reading circles, and as a text for class 
use in colleges and normal schools. Without presenting the 
ideal, it is meant to present standards by which the schools of 
a community may fairly be judged. The various matters set 
forth in the Appendix are meant to be suggestive and helpful, 
rather than prescriptive. 

Upon so many different subjects, no one man should try to 
present an authoritative opinion. The various chapters have 
been read in manuscript by gentlemen whose reputations are 
familiar to the educational profession. The book has also been 
read critically in proof, and I have freely availed myself of the 
criticisms and suggestions offered. In such a list as that which 
follows, an author hesitates to speak particularly of the assist- 
ance of individuals ; yet justice seems to require it, for in this 
instance the author was very doubtful of the course to pursue in 
dealing with the encyclopedia of so vast a subject, and needed 



PREFACE Vll 

encouragement and help to persist in an enterprise heavier than 
might be inferred from the size of the volume. 

In planning this work upon *' Our Schools, their Administra- 
tion and Supervision," I was greatly assisted by Dr. Leonard and 
Dr. Poland. For inspiration to undertake and encouragement 
to pursue the task, I am indebted to the generous enthusiasm of 
Dr. Thwing, author of " College Administration." To Mr. Lang 
I owe especial acknowledgment for profitable counsel upon many 
occasions ; and to Dr. Spaulding I owe constant help. To these 
gentlemen and to all the others who have so freely given to me 
their best counsel, leaving to me many a delightful memory of 
conferences and many a treasured letter of correspondence, I 
shall owe, in large measure, whatever success this book in a 
new field may meet. The names of these educators follow : — 

Mr. J. D. Allen, Principal, De Lancey School, Philadelphia, Pa. 

Dr. Thomas M. Balliet, Superintendent, Springfield, Mass. 

Hon. Charles J. Baxter, Superintendent, New Jersey. 

Mr. James R. Campbell, Headmaster, Kingsley School, Essex 
Fells, N.J. 

Mr. Frank B. Cooper, Superintendent, Seattle, Wash. 

Mr. Vernon L. Davey, Superintendent, East Orange, N.J. 

Mr. Edward H. Dutcher, Principal, Eastern District School, East 
Orange, N. J. 

Dr. Samuel T. Dutton, Teachers College, Columbia University, New 
York City. 

Mr. Benjamin C. Gregory, Superintendent, Chelsea, Mass. 

Miss Ada Van Stone Harris, Supervisor, Rochester, N.Y. 

Mr. H. E. Harris, Principal, No. 6 School, Bayonne, N.J. 

Dr. William T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education, 
Washington, D.C. 

Dr. Albert Leonard, Editor, Journal of Pedagogy, Syracuse, N.Y. 

Mr. William McAndrew, Principal, Girls' Technical High School, 
New York City. 

Mr. Clarence E. Morse, Principal, Ashland School, East Orange, N. J. 

Dr. Addison B. Poland, Superintendent, Newark, N. J. 

Dr. Elmer C. Sherman, County Superintendent, Essex County, N.J. 

Dr. Walter H. Small, Superintendent, Providence, R.L 



viil PREFACE 

Dr. Ffank E. Spaulding, Superintendent, Passaic, N.J. 
Mr. Randall Spaulding, Superintendent, Montclair, N.J. 
Dr. George W. Twitmyer, Superintendent, Wilmington, Del. 

Every chapter of this volume has appeared (especially copy- 
righted) in one or more of the following publications, namely: — 

(6) The School Journal^ New York. 
(2) Educational Foundations^ New York, 
(i) Teachers' Federation Bulletin^ Chicago. 
{i) Journal of Pedagogy, Syx2iCMSQ, 
(2) Education, Boston, 
(i) Intelligence, Chicago, 
(i) American Education, Albany. 
(i) School Board Journal, Milwaukee. 
' (i) Daily Eagle, Brooklyn, 
(i) Daily Advertiser, Newark. 

The chapters were, however, not prepared for such serial pub- 
lication, but as component parts of this work. 

One who writes of his own profession may be permitted a 
personal remark. This work is not autobiographic. I have 
used many illustrations, of which perhaps a tenth were drawn 
from my own professional experience. Most of them have 
come to me in conversation with others. A few were stored in 
memory when reading educational periodicals. I have used no 
illustration that I do not believe founded on fact ; but to avoid 
the identification of incidents, in several instances I have modi- 
fied immaterial features of the story. 

The omission of certain topics that might properly be treated 
under this title may be explained by the fact that, in case this 
work proves acceptable and useful to the profession, I hope to 
prepare, at some time in the future, a work with the title. Our 
Schools : Their Courses of Study and Methods. In that work, 
such topics may be considered as : text-books, subjects, pro- 
grams, order of topics, elimination, combination, unification, 
and addition of courses, constants, electives, education of 



PREFACE IX 

teachers, working power of children and youth, methods in the 
various subjects, requirements of civilized society (desirable and 
undesirable), selection of teachers, childhood and early adoles- 
cence, equipment of schools, architectural notes. The present 
work discusses what seems to me the fundamental matter. It 
may not be fundamental in sound philosophy, but it certainly 
is fundamental in practical American educational polity. 

If this text seems to avoid the unpleasant facts, — the crimes 
against childhood and against society itself, perpetrated in the 
name of education by dogmatic, unsympathetic, and incompe- 
tent school superintendents, principals, and teachers, and by 
board members unwilling to take or unable to understand pro- 
fessional advice, the corruption, the sordidness, the stolidity, 
the traditionalism, so often in evidence, — the avoidance has 
been intentional. I plead not ignorance, but the healthfulness 
of optimism. To all the discerning, a sad feature of this un- 
pleasantness is the sense of being without honor as a teacher 
that attaches to so many men and women. The young lady 
prides herself upon the fact that during the summer vacation 
*' no one dreamed that she was a teacher ! " The young man 
says that he is "teaching to get money," to study law or medi- 
cine or for a little start in business. There are various causes 
for this shamefacedness, but there is only one remedy, — better 
salaries, that is, far more money for education. 

At the present time, education is like a great steamship, or 
fleet of steamships, laboring hard in the trough of the world's 
sea for want of proper machinery and of sufficient coal to pro- 
duce power and to utilize it properly for speed. The passen- 
gers are all humanity of the future. Unfortunately, the strongest 
and best men and women of to-day are not yet generally busied 
with the tasks of education. The activit}'^ of a few such leaders 
shows our common need of them. Those who do not believe 
that educational improvement can be effected anywhere and 
almost continuously (with but few reactions), and those wh0' 
believe that educational progress in their own particular com- 



X PREFACE 

munity is impossible, all the discouraged, whether superintend- 
ents or board members, should consider the history of the past 
ten wonderful years in New York city. The importance of 
that demonstration in the concrete of so considerable a part 
of the principles and purposes of the new education cannot be 
overstated. In all our history, nothing greater has been done 
for the cause of American education. If one man, marshaling 
others worthy of such leadership, can do so thorough a work on 
so vast a scale against apparently indestructible traditions and 
irresistible forces, others can do heroic service elsewhere ; and 
so they are doing it, as many a school system in smaller cities 
testifies. North, South, East, and West. The need everywhere 
is for men of scholarship, of power, and of faith, men who know 
how to secure the things hoped for, but unseen. 

As the state is served by the lawyers, the church by the minis- 
ters, and the family and society itself by the physicians, so the 
school should be served by the teachers. For the maintenance of 
every great social institution, a profession able to render it expert 
service is required. In education, much confusion has arisen 
from failure to discriminate between the school and the profession 
that maintains it. Every true profession admits and discharges 
its own members ; devises and applies its own principles, in its 
own way ; chooses its own leaders and suffers no authority from 
without j fixes its own fees : in short, at the climax of its devel- 
opment, renders its expert service upon its own terms. To pro- 
mote teaching as a profession is to forward most effectively the 
interests of the school. 

W. E. C. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The School System i 

II. The Board of Education .11 

III. Administration 72 

I. The Affairs of the Board __Z3— ^ 

II. The Affairs of the Superintendent . _ . • 89 

III. The Affairs of the Principal 99 

IV. Supervision . . . . . . . . . 104 

^^V. The Superintendent . 133 

VI. The Principalship 176 

VII. The Supervisorship 206 

VIII. The Graded Public School 217 

IX. The State System and District School . . 237 

X. The Private School 246 

« XI. The Class Teacher 257 

-5?XII. The New Education and the Course of Study . 275 
XIII. The Educational Policy of the Community . .284 

- XIV. Education for Supervision 303 

XV. Getting the Office 322 

^ XVI. Salary, Tenure, and Certificate . . . -341 

Appendixes : 

I. Ages in Grades 371 

II. Wealth 373 

I. The Facts 373 

II. The Application 374 

xi 



Xll 



CONTENTS 



APPENDIXES PAGE 

III. Libraries 376 

A. School Reference 376 

B, For Teachers and Principals . . . 377 

IV. Parliamentary Rules . . . . . . 380 

V. Yearly Allowances for Books, Supplies, etc. . . 383 

VI. High School Electives 384 

VII. Specimen Programs 386 

VIII. Time Assignment, Elementary Schools . . . 389 

IX. Daily Programs 390 

A, Grade Programs . . . . . . 390 

B. Departmental Programs .... 391 
X. Conspectus of Manual Training Department . . 392 

XI. Taxation 394 

XII. Resignations 395 

XIII. Monthly Report of Finances 396 

XIV. Conduct — Attendance — Studies .... 397 
XV. Rank of Pupils 401 

XVI. Daily Attendance Record 401 

XVII. Teachers' Monthly Reports 402 

XVIII. Principals' Monthly Reports . . . . . 403 

XIX. Annual Report of Principal to Superintendent . 404 

XX. Rules and Regulations 405 

XXI. Report of Suspension of a Pupil to Board of Edu- 
cation 405 

XXII. Duties of Secretary or Clerk ..... 406 

XXIII. Form for Notice of Meeting of Board of Education 406 

XXIV. Teacher's Contract 407 

XXV. Affidavit to Bill presented to a Board of Education 407 

XXVI. Contract for building a Schoolhouse . . . 408 

XXVII. Record of Attendance 409 

XXVIII. Form of Inquiry regarding Candidate . . . 410 

XXIX. Teacher's Daily Plan 411 



CONTENTS 



xui 



APPENDIXES PAGE 

XXX. Postal Card Pupil's Absence Form Notice . .411 

XXXI. Parent's Certificate of Excuse for Pupil's Absence . 412 

XXXII. Eye and Ear Records 413 

XXXIII. Transfer Card . 414 

XXXIV. Requisition for Supplies 414 

XXXV. Application Form for Candidate . . . .415 

XXXVI. Monthly Lesson and Attendance Reports of Teachers 416 

XXXVII. Semiannual Rating Form of Teachers . . -417 

XXXVIII. Order for Teachers' Salaries 418 

XXXIX. Form of Note for Money borrowed . . .418 

XL. Certificate that Child has attended School . . 419 

XLI. Registration Cards 419 

XLII. Pupil's Record 420 

XLIII. Record of Books ....... 420 

XLIV. Teacher's Record Form 421 

XLV. Pupil's Misconduct and Special Report Form . . 421 

XLVI. Order Forms .422 

XLVII. Substitute Teacher's Attendance and Service Form 423 

XLVIII. The Long Vacation 424 

XLIX. Relation with the Parochial School .... 425 

L. Listing and Purchase of Text-books and Supplies . 425 



OUR SCHOOLS: THEIR ADMINISTRATION 
AND SUPERVISION 



CHAPTER I 

THE SCHOOL SYSTEM 

The most important feature of modern life is the singu- 
larly extensive development of the schools. General edu- 
cation characterizes the recent decades of the modern age 
and distinguishes the period from all earlier times. 

There are five great social institutions : Family, Church, 
School, Government, and Business or Occupation. The 
motive of the family life in the home is self-sacrifice. 
The religious motive in the Church is self-abnegation. 
The educational motive in the School is self-culture. The 
poUtical motive in the democratic State is self-assertion. 
The economic motive of business life is self-interest. 
Because of these distinctions in motive, we cannot ask one 
social institution to perform the functions of another. In 
the modern age, there have been developing new defini- 
tions of the functions of these great social institutions. 
The school no longer exists to prepare men for a clerical 
life. Its present purpose is universal, to prepare children, 
youth, and adults for more efficient service in each of the 
other great institutions. The development in these new 
directions is not yet complete, but it is progressing very 
rapidly. 



2 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Because each of the great institutions of modern society 
originated by differentiation from earlier conditions and 
serves a special purpose, various efforts designed to affect 
the School may at once be recognized as illogical or reac- 
tionary. To make religion the basis of education is to 
return into the past before churches and schools were dif- 
ferentiated from the temples and were developed as inde- 
pendent and integral social institutions. It is to convert 
the school partly into a church, and to do this whether the 
instruction is general or denominational. The school aims 
to enlarge the individual life, and cannot properly teach 
as its main lesson self-denial. Similarly, a strictly utili- 
tarian curriculum, pupil self-government, and paternalism 
(or maternalism) appear objectionable upon logical or his- 
torical grounds. 

From the point of view of school management, the unit 
of education is the school or school system that depends 
for its financial support upon a single local board of con- 
trol. From the point of view of the education of the 
pupils, the unit is the individual who is being instructed. 
From the point of view of public instruction, considered as 
an affair of the neighboring community, the unit is the sin- 
gle school, irrespective of what other schools may be asso- 
ciated with it in dependence upon a single governing board 
for support. The individual teacher in a school of several 
teachers is the unit in education only when education is 
considered as a matter wholly of imparting knowledge in 
definite items, as prescribed by formal courses of study. 

In American free common education, as seen in most 
communities, there may be one, two, or more schools under 
the control of a single governing board, whose executive 
agent is the superintendent of all of the schools. Occa- 
sionally, there are communities divided into several school 



THE SCHOOL SYSTEM 3 

districts with several more or less independent governing 
boards. Also, there are instances where several communi- 
ties have but one common board of school control. Again, 
there are instances where several communities with several 
independent governing boards employ a single general 
superintendent for all their schools. There are still other 
communities in which the several schools have no general 
superintendent, but in which the principals are under the 
direct control of the board itself. 

Free common education means to-day, by legal inter- 
pretation of the statutes in most States, education in any 
school supported wholly by public tax or by other public 
funds. In the smaller communities of from three to fifty 
thousand people, it includes the general high school or 
union school or free academy for the oldest pupils, the 
elementary or grammar schools for the great majority of 
boys and girls, and the kindergartens for the youngest 
pupils. In the typical community of ten thousand people, 
we usually find a school system on these lines, namely : — 

Board of Education 

Superintendent 

High School 

Elementary Schools 

The elementary schools are usually from three to six in 
number, with or without kindergartens. 

The jurisdiction of the superintendent is usually coor- 
dinate with that of the board of control. 

Subordinate to the superintendent are two groups of 
school directors, the principals of thfe schools, and the 
supervisors of special subjects, such as music, art, and 



4 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

manual training. In cities under ten thousand in popula- 
tion, the superintendent of schools is usually also principal 
of the high school. In such a case, his rank and authority 
are higher than that of other principals. In larger com- 
munities, the principals are usually independent of one an- 
other, and are of equal authority and rank except for the 
fact that the graduates of elementary schools go to the 
high school. Consequently, the high school principal has 
the superior prestige, and usually a higher salary than the 
elementary school principals. 

The supervisors of special subjects are subordinate to 
the superintendent ; but in their subjects, so far as their 
planning of the instruction is concerned, they are superior 
to the principals. They are employed as experts and, from 
that very fact, are recognized as such. 

From the administrator's point of view, all the class 
teachers, except such as may be heads of departments, 
irrespective of grades or salaries, are of equal rank. 

A typical school system with one hundred teachers upon the pay- 
roll would be as follows, viz. : — 
Board of Education. 
Its Component Committees, 
(i) Superintendent. 

(6) Supervisors: Music, Art, Physical Training, Manual Train- 
ing, etc.^ 

(id) Principals. 

(i) High School. 
(9) Elementary Schools, 
(i) Assistant Superintendent or Supervisor for Primary Grades. 
(10) High School Teachers. 
(28) Grammar School Teachers. 
(35) Primary Teachers. 
(10) Kindergartners. (Total, 100.) 

* For a discussion of the need of sociologists, psychologists, and physicians de facto^ 
if not in nomine, as supervisors, see Chapter VII, " The Supervisorship." 



THE SCHOOL SYSTEM 5 

In a highly developed school system, the relative num- 
bers of supervisors, principals, and teachers would be 
about as suggested by the figures in parentheses. Such a 
system cares for a total enrollment of from thirty-five 
hundred to four thousand children, aged four to twenty 
years, and housed in ten separate school buildings. In 
a very complete school system, there would be a con- 
siderably larger number of supervisors and specialists. 

For the financial support of a school system, the board 
of education is officially responsible. Its chief business is 
to get enough money to run the schools properly. How it 
is to get this money depends upon the laws of the State ; 
and these laws differ greatly in the various States. Indeed, 
they sometimes differ within the same State, for many 
communities have special charter provisions incorporated 
in the fundamental laws creating the municipalities. 

No financial provisions are more common than the first 
two explained below. The third is becoming more com- 
mon. 

1 . The board of education itself has the power directly to levy taxes 
and to issue bonds upon the ratable property of the municipality. The 
money thus secured is all that the schools have. The rate of taxation is 
sometimes limited to a certain number of mills per dollar. The amount 
of outstanding bonds is sometimes limited to a certain number of dollars 
of bonds to every thousand dollars of property.^ 

2. The board of education goes to the town or city council or other 
governing body with its request for money, and the council grants what 
seems proper. There are sometimes provisions of limits as to tax rate 
and bond issues. ^ 

3. Members of the board of education and of the council, their rela- 
tive numbers being fixed by law, hold a joint meeting and decide the 

1 It is a significant fact that American State legislatures have regarded it necessary so 
often to limit the effort that a municipality may make to develop an intelligent, orderly, pro- 
gressive, wealth-producing citizenship. 

2 See I, above. 



6 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

amount of tax and bonds for school uses. When the amounts exceed 
certain limits, the council has a veto upon the decisions of the joint 
board of school estimate. 

4. The schools have for current expenses certain rates fixed by 
State law. The amounts realized from taxation are independent of 
changing local conditions, except so far as the ratable property in- 
creases or decreases in amount. Bond issues for purchase of land 
or erection of buildings are, however, arranged as in i, 2, 3, above. 

5 . For variations affecting more or less each of the above plans, in 
certain States there are grants of money from the State treasury through 
general taxation, usually of corporations and inheritances. These grants 
may be based upon the number of teachers employed, upon days' attend- 
ance of children, upon the numbers of classes maintained, upon the 
census of children of school age and upon similar easily secured and 
proven facts. The State tax is sometimes partly direct, at fixed rates 
upon property. 

6. Again, to vary the conditions, in many States there are funds 
derived from lands or from sales of lands. The incoming funds or their 
profits are granted upon certain conditions for such purposes as en- 
couraging libraries in schools, assisting in the support of evening 
schools or of manual training, and partly paying superintendents' salaries. 

7. Similarly, in some instances, the incoming funds from licenses 
for the sale of intoxicants, for dogs, and for public entertainments are 
paid over, in whole or in part, to the public treasury to help in the sup- 
port of the schools. 

Whatever is the system, whether simple or complex, 
it is the business of the board of education to cause it to 
operate as far as possible for the good of the schools, 
whether so doing brings the members of such boards into 
politics, State or municipal, or not. Consequently, it is 
the duty of every member of the board to know the school 
law thoroughly. 

In addition to the board of education and to the super- 
intendent of schools, there is, in many States, provision for 
a board of examiners whose duty it is to license teachers. 
This board of examiners may consist of the superintendent 



THE SCHOOL SYSTEM 7 

of schools and of certain members of the board of educa- 
tion ; it may consist partly of these officers and partly of 
other persons selected by the board of education; or it 
may consist wholly of persons outside the board. 

Whatever may be the procedure by which a board of 
examiners is constituted, the duty of the board is to decide 
upon the qualifications of candidates for positions as teach- 
ers. This duty may involve investigation of their education 
and experience, or examination of their proficiency in aca- 
demic and professional subjects, or both. Successful can- 
didates receive licenses permitting them to teach for a term, 
or for a year, or for years, or for life, in various depart- 
ments of the schools. 

A typical school system is thus composed of various more 
or less independent departments, the board of education, 
the teachers, usually the municipal council in whole or in 
part, in respect to appropriations, and sometimes of a board 
of examiners, more or less distinct in its membership from 
the board and the teachers. 

The State is fundamentally the maker of the school, for 
its legislation and legal decisions determine the conditions 
of the school's establishment, maintenance, and growth. 
Frequently, the State is a direct contributor to the financial 
support of the school by grants from funds or taxes. Some- 
times, the State maintains the office of State Superintendent 
of Public Instruction upon a broader basis than the mere 
collecting of statistics of expenditures and attendance, and 
thus becomes itself an agency for administration and super- 
vision. In many States, there are State boards of education, 
with more or less extended jurisdiction and responsibilities. 
Such boards usually control the State normal schools for 
the training of teachers, and sometimes they control also 
the State schools for defectives and incorrigibles. 



8 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Our local schools have no connection with the United 
States Government, — not even with the Bureau of Educa- 
tion, whose duty consists merely of collecting and publish- 
ing statistics and other authentic school information. 

The tendency in school affairs is to increase the authority 
of boards of education, if need be, by decreasing that of 
the municipal councils ; to strengthen the State control over 
the schools, particularly in matters relating to the employ- 
ment of teachers and to the erection of good school build- 
ings; and to separate the responsibilities of boards of 
education from those of the teachers. State centralization 
is steadily proceeding. The differentiation of the duties 
of board members and of school teachers is steadily grow- 
ing clearer. By this differentiation, the board legislates 
upon all financial matters, and, with or without a veto, 
advises upon all educational matters, while the teaching 
force legislates upon educational matters, and advises only, 
upon financial matters. 

To illustrate : In a city, the board of education usually fixes the salary 
of a new teaching position, while the superintendent nominates the 
occupant of the position. The board may, or may not, have the power 
to reject nominations. The tendency at the present time is for boards 
to surrender the right to originate nominations. 

To illustrate again : The superintendent, with or without a council of 
principals and teachers, usually decides upon text-books with more or 
less definite authority in their selection or " listing," and advises the 
purchase of certain numbers of them at certain prices. 

To illustrate by a third case : The teaching force reports the need 
of another schoolhouse, advises the board regarding its plans, size, lo- 
cation, grades to be taught, probable number of pupils, equipment, and 
apparatus. The board of education legislates upon all these matters. 

Board members visit schools as they see fit or as they 
may be required by law. The school superintendent has a 
seat and a voice in all board meetings. When by merit 



THE SCHOOL SYSTEM 9 

he belongs in the position, nine times out of ten he can 
carry a majority of the votes for any measure that he 
favors, and can defeat any measure to which he is opposed. 

The public usually regards the officers of the board and 
the superintendent of the schools as the persons responsi- 
ble for their general conduct and management. This view- 
is substantially correct, for these persons hold office only 
during the time that they represent the purposes and opin- 
ions of a majority of the board. They necessarily settle 
many details between board meetings. 

The line of demarcation between the rights, duties, and 
responsibilities of boards of education, and the rights, 
duties, and responsibilities of school superintendents, super- 
visors, and principals, is theoretically plain and straight. 
Boards of education deal with financial matters ; super- 
visors, with educational matters. As a board member no 
person has any official rights at all except to vote, but as a 
delegated agent he may wield the entire authority of 
the board. 

Not infrequently, a well-meaning board member under- 
takes what really does not concern him. This is especially 
true of members recently elected or appointed, and is 
occasionally true of members who have been long in office, 
with a weak superintendent nominally in control of educa- 
tional affairs. Sometimes, a superintendent goes out of his 
legitimate province. This occurs at times from self-assert- 
iveness, crowding a weak board out of its proper business. 
A vigorous superintendent may undertake to negotiate for 
the purchase of real estate for a new school building. At 
times, the superintendent wanders from the straight path 
because of undue humility. Such a man is forced into a 
clerk-relation, — paying bills and buying petty supplies. 
It is not as easy in practice as it is in theory to draw the 



lO ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

line between financial and educational affairs ; but an 
analogy will help. A school superintendent in relation to 
a board of education stands somewhat as an attorney to a 
client. The client has all the rights, but has assigned all 
but one of them to his attorney, — namely, the right to with- 
draw his affairs from his care. He is employed because 
he knows better how to forward his client's affairs than 
the client himself knows. In the well-conducted school 
system, this principle governs the mutual relations of 
board and superintendent. 

The plan by which at board meetings the educational interests are 
represented professionally by a single person who has no vote is not 
ideal. It results too frequently in the overpowering of the one man by 
the number and the votes of the many board members. Various plans 
have been proposed to remedy this. One is the complete separation 
of the legislative and executive departments (the American political 
system), with all communications between them by written report and 
committee conference. Another is the creation of a school council 
equal in number with the board of education, with the right to attend 
the latter's meetings as delegates without a vote. The present custom 
is, for small cities, better than either of the suggested plans. A strong 
and able superintendent can carry almost any board with him. 



CHAPTER II 

THE BOARD OF EDUCATION i 

By whatever name the board of education may be called, 
its session is the substitute for the town meeting of the true 
democracy. Through the board of education, the people 
rule the school. A board member is neither an educator 
nor a governor. As a board member, he is, individually, 
nothing but a citizen. An individual counts only as one 
of the majority in control. There is no board of education 
except in meeting duly called and convened, and then only 
after roll-call and before adjournment. Not even in board 
meeting has a member any authority ; he has only his 
voice and his vote. The control of the schools is in the 
vote. The resolutions that are regularly adopted govern 
the schools. 

All of the authority of any board member is that legally 
given to him by the vote of the board as its agent. This 
authority must be expressly delegated, and is never implied. 
Officers of boards have the same authority as other mem- 
bers except in so far as State laws or board resolutions 
delegate express authority to them. 

* From a theoretical point of view, the best title for the board that legislates for the schools is 
" The Board of School Control," but the more common title now is the "Board of Education." 
The advantage of the title " Board of School Control " is that it states the fact, which is that 
the board governs the schools, whereas the objection to the title " Board of Education " is, 
that the board ought not to take charge of the educational work in the schools, and ought not 
to be considered as having charge of such work. In short, the function of the " Board of 
School Control " ought to be to provide ways and means for the teachers to do their work, — 
to accomplish their mission in the world. The title " Board of Education " causes many 
members in their first year of office, to assume professional relations that sometimes em- 
barrass the real educators. 

II 



12 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

In a representative democracy, these things cannot be 
otherwise. Only the vote can count. 
Illustrations may be multiplied. 

A board of nine once convened, after a canvass before the meeting 
had shown an opinion of eight to one in favor of a certain proposition. 
After discussion, the one convinced the eight, and a unanimous vote 
was recorded against the proposition. Promises made by some of the 
eight before the board meeting did not have to be recalled after the 
meeting, for they were obviously null and void. 

Again, it occurred that a certain member of a board of education 
assumed the functions of the entire board and issued orders accordingly. 
He did this with the approval of several other board members. The 
next session of the board, without discussion, revoked all the orders. 

A committee of a certain board, " without power," agreed to purchase 
land. At the regular meeting, the agreement was not sustained. The 
owner of the land could not collect any damages. 

Whether for good or for evil, not a week goes by in 
which board members do not discover that membership 
gives them a voice and a vote, but no authority whatever. 
The board in session represents the people. The members 
are merely individuals selected as delegates of the people. 

A board member, as such, has not even the authority of 
the superintendent of schools, or of a principal, or of a 
teacher, or of a clerk, or of a janitor. His position implies 
no relation as agent. This is a hard doctrine, resented in 
certain quarters until it is understood, and often not under- 
stood even by the employees of the board. 

Irrespective of the method of his appointment, a board member ought 
to represent a constituency. He ought to stand for some people and 
for some social ideas. The following classes of persons furnish good 
board members generally, namely, — 

I. Manufacturers accustomed to dealing with bodies of men and 
with important business interests. 

They handle large amounts of money and of property, and are not 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION r 13 

frightened at bond issues and at the totals of annual appropriations. 
They know that a hundred thousand dollars can be spent as honestly 
as ten dollars. 

2. Merchants, contractors, bankers, and other men of large affairs. 
A board of education controls a business, and deals with the busi- 
ness side of education. 

3. Physicians, if in successful practice. 

They are too busy to worry over details as do most professional peo- 
ple of small affairs. At the same time, their interest in hygiene and 
sanitation is invaluable. Their success evidences a sound, natural judg- 
ment, and their wide knowledge of life tends to develop common sense. 

4. College graduates in any walk in life who are successful in their 
own affairs remember what education has done for them. 

They usually understand the rights of children and adults to the in- 
heritances of the race in literature, art, industry, as well as in the three R's. 
When, however, such graduates do not properly appreciate culture, they 
are peculiarly dangerous to the educational welfare of the community. 

The following classes of persons seldom furnish valuable board 
members : — 

1. Inexperienced young men, whatever be their calling. 

2. Unsuccessful men. 

3. Old men retired from business. 

4. Politicians. 

5. Newspaper men. 

6. Uneducated and unlearned men. 

7. Men in subordinate business positions. 

8. Women. 

Because there have been within my knowledge persons in each of 
these classes who have been successful as board members, I state at 
some length my reasons for saying that they are generally unsuccessful. 

I. The immature young man has known too little of the great expe- 
riences of life : parenthood, loss of relatives, power over men and affairs. 
He has too little heart, — too little tenderness of heart ; too little tact ; 
too little of that great requisite, common sense or good judgment. 

He is apt to be ambitious, and to desire to use his board membership 
for some personal or partisan end. He is too near the days of his own 
education to be able to see reasons for doing things differently, and thus 
trying to make progress in the schools. Occasionally, he is also inclined 
to view the school superintendent as a teacher no longer to be followed. 



14 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

As a general proposition, it must be said that persofis under thirty 
years of age do not add to the success of a board of control in education. 
Most unfortunately, there is a marked tendency in cities to elect very 
young men to boards. 

2. Unsuccessful men are injurious to the welfare of the schools, for 
the very obvious reason that most men who have made failures of their 
own lives lack judgment, energy, or tact, or all these things combined. 
Being unsuccessful, they are likely to have a good deal of unemployed 
time upon their hands. This they are inclined to use in usurping, or 
in trying to usurp, the functions of supervisors. Being inefficient, they 
are, however, more annoying than harmful ; and they are not likely to 
secure reelection. Being unsuccessful, they are usually unhappy, and 
their companionship is depressing to educators. 

3. Old men retired from business are apt to be restless and irritable. 
They are also apt to be sure that their opinions are correct, and their 
age makes it unpleasant to argue with them and difficult for them to 
understand the meaning of an argument. 

" Time hangs heavy " upon their hands, and they are much inclined 
to worry over school affairs. 

4. Politicians are decidedly objectionable. They look upon janitor- 
ships as the " spoils of office " and as the means of maintaining politi- 
cal supporters. By politicians, I mean persons without visible means 
of adequate support, who nevertheless manage to keep their families 
in the necessities and often the comforts, even the luxuries, of life. 
Such persons are apt to desire an economical administration of the 
school affairs, because in such conditions it is easy to use public office 
to one's own advantage.^ 

5. Newspaper men are inclined to exploit school affairs for "copy" 
in the press. Sensationalism is not less injurious to schools than to 
churches. 

6. Uneducated and unlearned men help make boards of education 
into boards for education. They consume the time of supervisors in 
discussion of the elements of educational theory and practice. Their 
vote is often dangerous to the interests of culture, even when the men 
themselves mean well. 

7. Of all these comparatively objectionable classes of men con- 
sidered as material for good board members, perhaps the least objec- 
tionable is the class of men in subordinate positions. Their time in 

1 See note p. 161. 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 1 5 

the working hours of the day is usually not their own except by their 
employers' special permission, and hence they can seldom visit schools 
in the hours of the regular daily sessions. They are accustomed to 
obey, not to rule, — an unfortunate habit in any legislator or judge. 
They follow too meekly any leader. 

A good board consists wholly of men able to think for themselves and 
to explain the reasons^ for their conclusions. 

8. From several causes, women make poor board members. When 
married, they are usually busy with their children or grandchildren. 
When unmarried, or married and childless, they have many theories 
about children. Being women, they care little (and usually understand 
less) about business, which in reality is the only direct concern of the 
board. Whether married or not, women are generally much under the 
influence of particular men.^ 

There are two classes of women that can supply good board mem- 
bers. The first of these is composed of mothers whose children are 
grown men and women, and who have been well-educated themselves, 
and have given their sons and daughters good educations in high 
school and college. This class is that of women of experience and 
culture. A second class is that of women of property or of profession, 
with broad experience in life, by travel and acquaintance with affairs. 
This is a very small but a growing class. As board members, they are 
to be preferred to any of the seven objectionable classes of men. 

There are two plausible reasons for placing women of these classes 
upon boards of control in education. More than half of the pupils 
at school are of their sex. At least half of all the parents of school 
children are of their sex. When equal suffrage becomes the common 
condition in American politics, these reasons may become valid. 

Objections are sometimes offered to the following classes of persons 
also, namely, — 

I. Preachers and priests. 

For obvious reasons, such persons are likely to place religion before 
school education. There are, however, too many liberal men in the 
ministry and priesthood to warrant objection to the entire class. Cer- 
tain religious doctrines seem opposed to the very theory of education 
because they inculcate the belief that life is not a growth but a static 
condition. 

1 A profound belief in the wisdom and righteousness of female suffrage does not prevent 
my recognition of these facts. 



l6 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Perhaps the greatest real objection to ministers as a class is that 
they deal with individuals as such, and are inclined to be too much 
interested in the individual welfare of pupils and teachers. The reli- 
gious politician is sometimes too much in evidence. 

A successful and busy minister or priest represents a large constitu- 
ency and often makes a good board member. 

The retired minister, when still young in mind and in years, who is 
doing some literary work, often makes a very desirable member, for he 
is likely to be a man of culture, aspiration, experience, and good faith. 

2. Lawyers. 

The chief objection to lawyers is their contentiousness in board 
affairs. Other objections are, their lack of executive qualities, their 
indecision, proneness to procrastination, talkativeness where action is 
needed, and inclination to politics. 

All these objections apply at times. Yet a good lawyer, who is a 
parent, a trustee of estates, and accustomed to secrecy in the affairs of 
clients, often makes an admirable board member. 

3. Bachelors. 

Except when unmarried men are young, no sound objection can lie 
to their service upon boards of education. On the contrary, having no 
domestic home affairs, they are free for much evening work upon com- 
mittees regarding board affairs, and, therefore, often make desirable 
members. It is true that they have no children in the schools, but 
this is not wholly a disadvantage. Childless men are often very fond 
of children and youth. 

The ideal board member has the following qualifications ; namely : — 

1. Age from thirty to sixty-five years. 

2. Education at least to the extent of high school graduation. 

3. Experience in the affairs of property, of a profession, or of a 
business. 

4. The confidence in himself and the reputation for good judgment 
that come with success in one's personal affairs. 

A board composed exclusively of such men is an ideal board. When 
a majority of the members meet these four standards, or most of them, 
a community may congratulate itself upon having a very good board. 

These standards have been presented in the order of their impor- 
tance, the last being least. 

The foregoing principles have been stated with great fullness, be- 
cause as school superintendents improve in quality and increase in 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 1 7 

number, they are considering more and more what sort of men to 
desire for board membership. More and more, also, they are being 
consulted by the makers of candidates for office, regarding nominations 
or appointments. At the present time, in American cities, as a matter 
of custom, school superintendents have longer tenure in office than 
board members. The supervisors have still longer tenures. As for 
the principals of city schools, their tenure "during competence and 
good behavior " almost always means tenure for life, when they desire 
it. Consequently, the sort of men educators as a class desire and 
intend to have, they can usually get for board members. 

The typical board of education is kaleidoscopic. Few 
men serve three terms. Not one in fifty serves twenty-five 
years. Not one in a thousand serves fifty years. As 
school supervision becomes more and more a profession, 
the school superintendent looks forward to a life service. 
It is very much his business to influence the people of his 
community in the election or appointment of good board 
members. This influence ought, however, invariably to 
relate to the principles involved and not to the persons. 

Of honesty as a prerequisite for board membership, it 
is not necessary to say much. The law and the courts 
will take care of all overt dishonesty. Secret dishonesty 
is very hard to prove. Irrespective of its effects upon his 
personal fortunes, it is the duty of every school superin- 
tendent, supervisor, and principal, both to oppose the elec- 
tion or appointment of dishonest men, and to endeavor to 
remove them from office, when actually in office. 

Of partisan politics, it is also unnecessary to say much. 
Neither Republicanism, Democracy, Populism, Socialism, 
nor any other "ism" is necessarily a qualification or dis- 
qualification for board membership. A partisan board may 
be as good as a bipartisan, or a tripartisan, or a " mug- 
wump " board. But any use of the board's legal powers, 
or of a board member's political influence, for partisan 



l8 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

purposes, is reprehensible in the extreme. Appointments 
of Democratic janitors, Republican truant officers, Populist 
clerks, because of their politics, is abuse of official power. 
No school superintendent does his full duty who, at his 
earliest opportunity fitting, does not publicly rebuke every 
such appointment. 

When every school superintendent does his full duty in 
this respect, the day will have passed when janitors of 
schools get higher salaries than principals. 

After the question of the personal qualifications of men 
for board membership, the next great question is the mode 
of their selection. 

Three methods prevail, namely, — 
First, election by wards. 
Second, appointment by mayors. 
Third, election at large. 

There are other methods, but these are the most com- 
mon. The advantages and disadvantages of each are 
these, namely, — 

I. In election by wards, men are secured who generally 
are interested in the local school or schools. From one 
point of view, this is a distinct advantage. Ward members 
are known and can be reached by their neighbors, to whom 
as constituents they are responsible. From another point 
of view, it is a distinct disadvantage, for it opens the way 
to much factional and partisan politics, to "wire-pulling" 
and " log-rolling." 

To offset these advantages, there are numerous disadvan- 
tages. The larger the city and the greater the number of 
the wards, the greater are the disadvantages. Further, 
the greater the number of wards in proportion to the size 
of the city, the greater are the disadvantages. That is, a 
city of twenty-five thousand people and ten wards suffers 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 1 9 

much more from these disadvantages than a city of the 
same population with five wards. In such a city, with but 
three or four wards, the disadvantages are scarcely opera- 
tive at all. 

Since ward election is the most common of all methods 
of selecting board members, the disadvantages must be 
fully considered here. 

The first of these disadvantages is in the limitation of 
persons from whom to select board members. In every 
community, the people who are successful in their personal 
affairs tend to settle in neighborhoods. It follows, often, 
that entire wards contain very few persons competent to 
serve upon boards of education. 

In the second place, the wards that are composed almost 
wholly of persons who have not been successful in life's 
affairs in the modern social system of capital-and-labor, 
work-for-wages, land-for-rent, business-for-profit, are not 
likely to select their best citizens but their most popular 
ones. In point of fact, it often happens that the school 
janitor, belonging to the dominant party, selects the candi- 
date for board membership and practically puts him into 
office. Persons thus selected are not likely to possess the 
four great qualifications of sufficient age, good education, 
large experience, and self-confidence based upon success. 
On the contrary, boards of education elected by wards in 
cities almost invariably and inevitably contain members 
whose daily vocations are such as these : Steam engineers, 
saloon-keepers, petty tradesmen, mechanics, politicians 
with no visible means of support, rent-collectors, insurance 
agents, clerks, and other wage-earners.^ 

^ I speak plainly. Once in half a dozen instances such men make good board members ; 
four times they make indifferent members; and once they are likely to be "grafters" or 
stumbling-blocks to progress. The weakness of an hereditary political aristocracy is that it 
permits many persons of small mental capacity and of inferior moral character to influence. 



20 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

In the third place, the members who are desirable, 
coming from intelligent and well-intentioned wards, have 
little or no influence- in the wards that elect undesirable 
members. Consequently, boards elected by wards are 
almost inevitably not only partisan, but also factional. 
The larger the number of wards, the more this disad- 
vantage is in evidence. 

In the fourth place, ward election means that no board 
member represents the city as his constituency. This 
places every board member at a singular disadvantage in 
respect to all the supervising force, especially the superin- 
tendent, whose jurisdiction covers the entire city. This 
results in jealousy. 

To illustrate : A board member, elected by a ward, immediately after 
his election introduced a resolution constituting each member a visitor 
to some special school in his ward, with power to nominate janitors and 
teachers. He based his argument upon three premises : First, that this 
would give each member something definite to do and a school to 
which he would become personally attached. Further, when each man 
had one school in his care, no school would be neglected. Third, that 
no man was really competent or inclined to interest himself equally in 
all the schools. This was a direct attack upon the school superin- 
tendent and was probably due to jealousy. 

The objections to such a plan are as diverse as is the explanation of 
the motive of the resolution, which was to reduce the power of the super- 
intendent till it was less than that of the ward member. These objec- 
tions are fully indicated in the foregoing pages. No board member, as 
such, has any legal jurisdiction. He has only a vote. Again, the danger 
is that he may work for one school even against the interests of other 
schools and of the system as a whole. Yet further, he may use the 
power over one school, when he has it, to his own advantage and to 
its disadvantage as an instrument of education. Fourth, when the 

if not to control, great affairs; the weakness of our elective political democracy is that it often 
deliberately promotes to positions of social control persons essentially no better fitted for their 
duties than Old World nobles. Unfortunately, our economic aristocracy, tending now to be 
hereditary, in many ways, direct and indirect, seems to encourage official incompetence and 
moral unfitness. 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 21 

superintendent is incompetent or disinclined to work equitably for the 
interest of every school and of all schools, the community needs a new 
superintendent, one new superintendent, not a collection of non-pro- 
fessional superintendents, one to a school. 

This case has been presented fully, for it is typical. In effect, it pre- 
vails in practice in many American cities ; and it is always pernicious. 
Its result in practice is to set the various schools, their principals, 
teachers, and board representatives, at odds with each other. 

For a superintendent or for a board to recognize that this state of 
affairs actually exists in the schools is to take the first step to do away 
with it. 

In the fifth place, ward election is a disadvantage because 
the system attracts the ambitious young politician, particu- 
larly the young lawyer who wishes ** to get before the 
public." His plan is to make board membership a step- 
ping-stone to office in the city council or in the lower house 
of the State legislature. Not infrequently, a young politi- 
cian will move into a ward simply because he sees there, 
or thinks that he sees there, an opening into politics via 
board membership. 

Membership upon the board of control in education 
ought to be, not the weapon of success, but the crown of 
it. To use any educational relation for one's personal ends 
is to profane the temple. We may forgive one who seeks 
to use his membership upon a board of education for any 
other end than the general welfare, but we must not ignore 
the offense. 

In the sixth place, election by wards is extremely objec- 
tionable when it occurs in connection with State and 
national elections, which necessarily are based upon the 
lines of the great party politics and policies. When the 
attention of the voters is distracted from local conditions 
by national political principles, then is the opportunity of 
city " bosses " and machines to place in nomination and in 



22 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

course of election by the dominant party any person, how- 
ever incompetent and base he may be. 

In the seventh place, ward election greatly complicates 
the appointment of candidates. When a particular city of 
four or five wards elects from two wards the only really 
qualified members, these are the men who ought to have 
the chairmanships of the important sub-committees of the 
board. To relegate the other members, not as well quali- 
fied, to the unimportant committees as subordinate mem- 
bers is to create conditions from which constant friction 
must result. 

II. A second mode of selecting board members is that 
of appointment by the mayor. 

Ward election is more and more objectionable in propor- 
tion to the size of the population, and to the extent of its 
division into wards. Appointment by the mayor is increas- 
ingly desirable in the same proportion. It is the easiest 
solution of a grave problem. But it is not always a true 
solution. 

The first great advantage of appointment by the mayor 
meets the first disadvantage of ward election. The mayor 
can select from the entire city, and consequently can select 
the best men. Further, while it is often difficult to get 
good men to run for the office, such men seldom decline 
appointment. Undoubtedly, the sort of man who objects 
to going before the people is not the ideal good man, but 
he is a much better man than his opposite, the noisy poli- 
tician, who delights in elections. 

The second advantage of appointment by the mayor is 
that the appointee represents the mayor, who himself rep- 
resents the entire city. The appointed board member 
looks upon the whole community as his constituency. 

The third advantage is that every citizen can hold the 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 23 

mayor responsible for the unwise or wrong act of any 
board member. To locate responsibility is to take the 
first step toward competence and honesty in office. More- 
over, the mayor is extremely unlikely to appoint a man 
less honest and intelligent than himself. . He likes to be 
well thought of by the people generally. Therefore, he 
desires to have the best citizens known as his friends. 

The fourth advantage is that reappointments are very 
common. A good board member, who, despite the work 
involved, the responsibility, and the care, is willing to serve 
a second term is almost certain to make a better board 
member than before. There are exceptions, no doubt, but 
the principle is sound. 

The fifth advantage is that an appointive office is sel- 
dom in line with any elective office. No appointed mem- 
ber is likely to consult his own political future in any of 
his acts. He is not likely to try to curry favor with any 
particular class of people or section of a city, in the hope 
of promotion to a more important office. That he may try 
to please the mayor, is not necessarily undesirable. 

Lastly, members serving by appointment are likely to 
be of much the same uniformly high grade of persons. 
The school superintendent is very likely to be consulted 
in their selection except in cases of reappointment. Con- 
sequently, there are no jealousies because this man 
represents a ward of wealth and culture, and that man 
a ward of working people, too busy and too tired to select 
good men as candidates in the party primaries. 

Yet there are serious disadvantages to boards by ap- 
pointment of the mayor. The appointed officer sometimes 
is too much under the influence of an unfit appointing 
officer; and the people generally take no interest in the 
affairs of boards serving by appointment. 



24 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

An illustration serves to explain the first disadvantage. 

An election was offered to a certain educator as superintendent of a 
certain city by the nominating committee to which that power had been 
delegated by an appointive board. The successful candidate made 
three conditions precedent to acceptance. To the third of these con- 
ditions, which related to building a schoolhouse, the chairman of the 
committee replied, "I cannot do that. You see Mr. A (the mayor) 
comes up for reelection next year, and if the board builds that school- 
house now, he will lose the support of," etc. This board member was 
anxious for his friend's political welfare. 

This serious disadvantage is in the personal relation 
often existing between the mayor and his appointees. 
Evidences of it are frequent. It tends to color the opin- 
ions of all board members and to influence their acts. 
Sometimes, this is a good feature. But the ideal state of 
affairs is where each board member thinks and acts inde- 
pendently of all personal considerations for himself or 
anybody else. 

A less serious disadvantage is the community's loss of 
interest in school affairs through their loss of direct power 
over them. An elected board member is answerable to 
his constituency, and this constituency is interested in him, 
and through him, in the school affairs. 

This disadvantage is more apparent than real, for 
parents are necessarily interested in their schools and in 
an immediate way. Public education can never be very 
far from the people. 

Another objection to appointive boards is not necessarily 
inherent in their constitution. This objection is that the 
membership is often not well distributed geographically. 
Sometimes, many of the members come from a single 
neighborhood. This may be unfortunate, but it does not 
necessarily conduce to the injury of the schools. A mayor 
makes at least some of his appointments by consultation 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 25 

with others. When important or large sections seem 
likely to be without representation, it is the duty of good 
citizens to bring proper persons to the mayor's attention. 

There is an incidental advantage, not educational in its 
nature, but distinctly valuable in the upbuilding of a city, 
in the fact that when it is felt in a mayoralty election 
that the mayor has the power to make or unmake the 
schools, good citizens will increase their endeavors to 
secure a good man for the office. As a general proposi- 
tion, the better the conduct of the city's general affairs, 
the better the conduct of educational matters. The more 
power the mayor has, the more likely is the election of a 
strong and honest man. Such is the general principle. 
Of course, the connection of the mayor with the schools 
is apt to be forgotten in the excitement of the campaigns 
for nomination and election. 

III. The least common method is the election of a board 
of education at large. 

The advantages of this method are these ; namely : — 

First : Every board member represents the entire city 
directly. To this entire constituency he is responsible. 

Second : Candidates can be taken from any part of the 
city. Two good men may be available in one ward, while 
none is available in another. This freedom and this range 
of choice tend together to secure a high average of per- 
sonal qualifications for board membership. 

Third : Many good men who will not run as ward can- 
didates will do so as city candidates, because the honor of 
election is so much greater. 

Fourth : As a board member, the man in office is not 
interested more in one school than in another. He has no 
special neighborhood interests to protect for political 
reasons. 



26 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Fifth (and this advantage relates as well to the ap- 
pointive board) : In election at large, a small board may be 
provided. 

When a city has eight wards and two members from 
each ward, the board is composed of sixteen members, 
each holding office for two years. Such a board is too 
large, as is argued later. 

There are certain disadvantages in the elective board, 
however, that must not be disregarded. 

First : When a board is elected at large, the election 
of board members, in the politician's eye, takes on large 
significance. Consequently, there is likelihood of the elec- 
tion of mere politicians or tools of politicians.^ 

Second : In this case the people are inclined to look 
upon board membership as a political office. This, rightly, 
no one should ever think it to be. But in the present con- 
dition of American politics, a board elected upon a Repub- 
lican or a Democratic ticket is likely to consider obligations 
that at most are personal and private, as political and 
public. 

Irrespective of the number of men upon a board of 
education, and upon the supposition that the number is 
the same whether the members are elected by wards, or 
at large, or are appointed by the mayor, the following 
appear as incontrovertible conclusions : — 

A large city, divided into wards, each electing board 
members, is in an intolerable educational condition. A 
board of sixty, of even four hundred, members is not 
unknown in America. Wherever it is known, the school 
conditions are unworthy of our enlightened times. 

In a city of middle size, twenty to fifty thousand people, 
a board elected by wards is endurable, but not desirable. 

1 See page 64. 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 2/ 

In communities of less than twenty thousand people and 
not divided into more than four or five wards, such a 
board may be as good as any other, and perhaps better 
than an appointive board. 

In large cities, the appointive board is likely to be the 
most valuable to the schools. 

In cities of the middle size, the choice between a board 
by appointment of the mayor and a board by election at 
large must depend upon local conditions. As a general 
principle, the latter is preferable in a democratic nation. 
To remove from the people the right to select directly 
their officers who legislate in so important a department 
as that of free public education, is to assert the people's 
incompetence directly to rule themselves. 

In the smallest places where there is a school system, a 
board by appointment is undesirable. A board by elec- 
tion at large is the best kind of a board for towns and 
cities of less than twenty thousand in population. 

However, under special conditions, a board by appoint- 
ment may be a failure in a city of a quarter of a million ; a 
board by election at large may be a failure in a town of five 
thousand people ; and a board by ward election is likely to 
be a failure almost anywhere. Change is often desirable, 
because, though not every change produces progress, with 
no change there can be no progress. Mere change of 
persons in office may not be enough. A change in the 
system seems often to be required. Upon the occasions of 
change, the educator has a chance to move for progress. 

There is an argument for appointive boards that de- 
serves brief consideration, and it is to this effect : A city 
is a municipal unit over which the chief officer is the 
mayor. To shut him out from any authority over the 
schools and yet to hold him responsible for the conduct of 



28 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

municipal affairs, seems unfair and illogical. There is, 
however, in truth, but a slight connection at best between 
the general municipal administration and the educational 
department, and this connection is purely financial. 

Unquestionably, at the present time the schools are in a 
transitional state in their development. It seems hardly 
probable that the method of an entirely independent de- 
partment, a school district covering the same territory as 
the city government, yet independent of it, will long con- 
tinue. The tendency in American government is toward 
concentration of authority and consolidation of interests. 
The important thing is so to direct this tendency as to 
secure the best possible legislation for the schools. 

The first consideration relative to boards of education 
is the quality of their members ; the second is the mode of 
their election ; the third is the length of their tenure of 
office ; the fourth is the number of members ; and the 
fifth is their compensation, if any, in office. The first two, 
the most difficult, have been considered at some length. 

The ordinary term of board members in office when 
elected by wards is two years. Each ward elects two 
members, often called commissioners, one each year, each 
of whom serves two years. This is too brief a term, and 
brings too close together the exciting periods of nomina- 
tion and election. It is especially objectionable because, 
in actual practice, few members serve second, third, and 
more terms. The first year of any man's experience in a 
position dealing with practical affairs is seldom one of 
much value to any person except himself. The ignorance 
of what business a board of education has to transact is 
sometimes not as great as the new member's confidence in 
his opinion as to what business the board ought to trans- 
act, but it is generally very marked. Modest men can do 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 29 

little or nothing the first year they are in office. A two 
years' term seldom gives more than one year's good service. 

On the other hand, when an unwise election or appoint- 
ment has been made, a long term of office becomes dan- 
gerous to the welfare of the schools. Five years seem to 
be the extreme limit that ought to be considered for board 
members. Similarly, a term of three years appears to be 
the minimum of a wise length of tenure. The larger the 
community, the longer should be the tenure. 

In communities of from five to twenty thousand, three 
years is a sufficient tenure, but a four years' tenure is 
better than two. In communities above twenty thousand, 
a term of four years makes a wise period. All the good 
members are likely to be reelected or reappointed. The 
longer the tenure the greater the likelihood of a second 
or third term. When tenures exceeding four years are 
attempted, many good men shrink from definitely binding 
themselves for so long a period of time, fearing too great 
changes in the affairs of private life. 

It is sometimes said that the terms of board members should be as 
long as the term of the tenure of the school superintendent. No city 
should elect a school superintendent for less than three years. There 
is a serious objection to giving him a longer term than a board member 
has, for the reason that he may then be in office with a unanimously 
hostile board. To illustrate : — 

Superintendent elected for four years, — say 1904. 

Board elected for three years, — say 1904. 

1904. — Unanimous election of superintendent, 15 votes. 

1905. — Elect, hostile members, 5 votes. 

1906. — Elect, hostile members, 5 votes. 

1907. — Elect, hostile members, 5 votes. 
Consequently during 1907-1908 the board is wholly against him. 

There is an objection to giving the superintendent the 
same period tenure as the board members, namely, that he 



30 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

comes up for reelection at the end of each term at the same 
season, with the same general group of members. This 
throws him into politics to secure their reelection or re- 
appointment. The remedy is to reelect (or defeat him) 
just before the end of their terms.^ 

The next and fourth question relating to boards of edu- 
cation is, What is the best size for them.? The extremes 
are indeed extremes. On the one side, we have the single 
school " visitor " or " trustee," and on the other side the 
complicated system of a central board of many members, 
with many subordinate local boards. Such a central board 
usually has an executive committee, or its equivalent. 
What is the ideal size for a community under fifty thousand 
and over five .-* 

Certainly the ideal board consists not of one man, and 
not even of so small a number as three. The system by 
which one layman has control of the schools is education- 
ally as bad as that by which the control is vested in a board 
composed of fifty or more members. Without stating fully 
the objections to these small numbers, I present the rea- 
sons for advocating boards of from five to ten members, 
the nearer five the better. 

First : Seven board members are enough to give a 
reasonable variety of opinions, and yet not so many that 
they may not sit down and reason together. Five makes 
an even better number for discussion directed to the point 
in issue. 

Second : Seven men may be formed into three com- 
mittees of two men each, with the chairman of the board 
ex officio a member of each. Committees of two or three 
are large enough to avoid serious errors upon matters of 

1 Other aspects of this question are considered fully in Chapter V, " The Superin- 
tendent." 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 3 1 

importance, and yet not so large that they cannot be gath- 
ered together quickly. They are not so large as to permit 
the shifting of responsibility from one member to another, 
till finally no one is held. 

Third : Small boards are far more likely than large 
boards to consider candidly and thoroughly the reports of 
committees. 

Fourth : It is possible for the school superintendent to 
know personally every member of a small board, and yet 
to transact his routine business. Calling upon, even writ- 
ing to, the separate members of a large board, in respect 
to important measures before they are to be acted upon, is 
practically impossible. Yet this officially intimate relation 
is of the greatest importance to the success of a school 
administration. 

Fifth : In a small board, every member considers him- 
self, and is considered by the people of his community, 
responsible for the measures adopted by the board. Ab- 
sence from a board meeting is uncommon. 

Sixth : The members of a small board soon become suf- 
ficiently interested to learn at least the elementary principles 
of school legislation and administration. The advantage 
of this knowledge is, to the supervising force, immeasur- 
able. 

Seventh : Small boards are in a position to deal quietly 
and carefully with all delicate questions of personality. 
At critical times, they can avoid undue publicity, scandals, 
and mob influences. Merely to reduce large boards to 
small boards, is automatically, perforce, to do away with 
politics and politicians of the lesser and perhaps baser sort. 

Eighth : Small boards attract a superior quality of men. 
The average of competency and of unselfish interest is 
nearly always higher in a small board than in a large one. 



32 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Ninth : In the small board, the superintendent can get 
a hearing without becoming an orator. While there can 
be no objection to a superintendent who is a good extem- 
poraneous public speaker, ability of this kind is not at all 
essential to success in reasonable conditions.^ 

In the light of these advantages, we are ready to consider 
the very serious objections to boards of over fifteen mem- 
bers, a number that may be taken as the reasonable 
extreme. 

The disadvantages of large boards with thirty, forty- 
five, sixty, a hundred members, even more, are as follows, 
namely, — 

First: At ordinary routine meetings, it is difficult to 
get a full attendance. Consequently, there are often 
"snap" votes. 

To illustrate : In a board of thirty-four, twenty attended a meeting, 
twelve voted for, and seven against, a certain measure. At the next 
meeting twenty-nine attended. On a motion to rescind, only ten out 
of the twelve stood by their first vote. The larger the board the less 
can a superintendent foresee, and the more difficult is it for him to steer, 
a steady course for progress. Many ill-considered things are done that 
never would have had the support of a majority of the board members, 
had all been present. 

Second: The large board is an open invitation to the 
political superintendent or to the educational autocrat. 
There is no middle course. The superintendent must 
either " carry water on both shoulders " or be prepared *' to 
get things through " by caucus or by other prearranged 
devices and forces. He must either submit all details to 
the board's " happy-go-lucky " choice, or only the largest 
matters, and these only when his success is assured by 
"cut and dried" plans. The political superintendent 

* This point is fully considered in Chapter V, " The Superintendent.'^ 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 33 

becomes nervous and purposeless. The autocrat develops 
backbone at the expense of brain. Neither has any assur- 
ance of long tenure. 

When by accident or otherwise a thoroughly reasonable, 
well-equipped, progressive educator becomes superintend- 
ent in a community with a large board of education, his 
very ability causes him quickly to adjust himself to these 
conditions. So far as his board knows, he soon becomes a 
chameleon or a lion. Neither of those characters is desir- 
able for the schools. 

Third : The large board is quickly responsive to popu- 
lar movements. It is timid. A crowd is always weak in 
pursuit of a plan. It is also vacillating. A crowd can 
never represent a high average of culture. Consequently, 
cities with large boards of education are seldom education- 
ally progressive, and never critical of their schools.^ They 
always have "schools equal to the best anywhere." To 
suggest the contrary is to arouse, not inquiry or ambition, 
but anger. 

Fourth : In large boards, only the orators get a hear- 
ing. The man who can reason well in conversation but 
who has no gift and perhaps no aspiration to " stir men's 
hearts " is not heard except perhaps in a protesting vote. 
The lone superintendent is but little in evidence, unless he 
has the genius of a Machiavelli, or of a Bismarck, which (in 
view of the emoluments of the profession) is very unlikely. 

In consequence, large boards represent by their vote 
the average of the common people's opinion, and not the 
reasoned product of the best thinkers. This is democratic 
enough, but true Americanism is a desire to live up to the 
best. 

* Those who are curious regarding the actions of crowds may enjoy reading " The Psy- 
chology of Socialism," by Le Bon, or " Social Laws," by Tarde. 



34 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Fifth : Large boards cannot handle delicate matters 
successfully. 

To illustrate : An aged and worn-out teacher is no longer fit for serv- 
ice. Two propositions come up : to discharge her, or to retire her on 
a pension. It is not safe to discuss either proposition in a big public 
meeting. The public often seems to think that anybody who can walk 
and talk is fit for service as a teacher. The taxpayers usually look upon 
pensioning teachers as robbery. All that a large board can do, in such 
a case, is to ignore the facts, which is a sore injustice both to the infirm 
annuitant going through the motions of a teacher, and to the children 
in his or her class. 

Many other delicate matters must also be ignored. 

Sixth : Responsibility cannot be located. A large board 
almost inevitably divides into the adherents of the two 
great national parties. Then, because there is no rea- 
son inherent in school affairs for any such division, the 
two groups break into factions. Combinations of these 
factions put through all school measures. These combina- 
tions are constantly changing. There are usually three to 
six men who are the real leaders. The rest come merely to 
vote or to hear the proceedings. 

Seventh : The work of the various committees of the 
board is seldom satisfactory. The problem of a proper 
subdivision of a large board is a very serious one.^ 

Eighth : The large board does not lead to many men's 
desiring reelection or reappointment. The few who do 
serve term after term get entire control, necessarily by 
political means. This soon means ring rule without rea- 



1 This subject is more fully considered later in this chapter. The choice is either to create 
many committees, or else to create a few large ones. In a large board, a small committee 
often has great difficulty in securing the passage of its recommendations, while a large 
committee is unwieldy. A board of sixty, divided into committees, has more members upon 
each committee than the entire board should have. The opportunity for the development 
of a " secret ring " is obvious. 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 35 

Such, in general, are the several objections to large 
boards. Three reasons often alleged in their favor de- 
serve consideration. 

First : It is said that bribery of large boards by con- 
tractors and other persons who deal with the schools is 
too expensive and too public. In reply, individual bribery 
is easy and cheap, for many inferior men are elected. 
Further, only the ring needs to be dealt with ; and respon- 
sibility is hard to locate. 

To illustrate : In a board that was bought to give a certain contract, 
the two men who " handled the money " voted publicly against the con- 
tract. This was shrewd and safe. 

Second : It is said that large boards increase the public 
interest in school affairs. If so, let us make the boards still 
larger. If one man in a hundred must be placed upon the 
board, why not one in ten .? Why not indeed have the meet- 
ings in the public square .'* In point of fact, often there is 
riot enough business for a large board to transact. In con- 
sequence, false issues are often forced into public attention. 

The unnecessary instances of debate and even of public 
excitement in school affairs are very numerous. The most 
trivial things are brought into the arena. When by acci- 
dent such things engross the attention of a small board, 
they are disposed of without public disturbances. The 
public interest aroused by a large board is not educational 
in its motive, but sensational and spectacular. 

Third : On behalf of large boards, it is said that they 
enable the school superintendent to " railroad " measures 
through without debate. A good superintendent may be 
vain enough to desire his measures " railroaded through in 
sealed express cars," but when he persists in this vanity, 
he will find, among the laymen, competitors trying, and 



36 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

sooner or later succeeding, in doing the same thing. This 
is not democracy, but "bossism." A victory, even for 
progress, when won by force rather than by reason, is 
likely to cost dear in the end. 

The last inquiry regarding boards of control is whether 
the members deserve, and ought, or ought not, to receive 
compensation. The answer depends entirely upon the 
nature of the service rendered. Where a board of educa- 
tion of five or seven members is created as a commission 
to manage and to visit the schools, giving constant semi- 
professional service, a certain compensation is in order. 
Such a board is a part of the supervising staff, however it 
may be constituted, by election or by appointment. 

To make a paid office of board membership is to invite 
the candidacies of persons looking for the salary. This is 
to help to create a public impression that the board of con- 
trol of lay members is really a professional body. As soon 
as salaries are attached to board membership, then qualifi- 
cations ought to be attached by State law. 

Partly because of public disgust with the dishonesty and 
incompetence of many boards of education, and partly be- 
cause of public disgust with the disinterestedness of the 
gratuitous service of many classes of persons, — namely, 
of certain taxpayers who are suspected of blocking prog- 
ress to protect their own pocket-books; politicians, who 
are suspected of trying to help their friends; etc., — at 
the present time there is certainly a tendency to estab- 
lish, or at least to consider the establishment, of paid 
boards. Qualifications for membership upon such boards 
may be as follows ; namely : age, thirty ; education, college, 
normal, or professional school graduate ; residence, three 
years ; property, a thousand dollars of real estate ; service, 
daily (not necessarily all day) ; term in office, four years ; 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 37 

salary, twelve hundred dollars ; number of members of 
board of control, five ; extra compensation to secretary, a 
hundred dollars. 

The presence of such a board, appointed or elected 
after proven eligibility, with a salary lower than the super- 
intendent's, together with the fact that the membership 
qualifications are probably less than those of the superin- 
tendency, may reduce the authority of the legislative body 
to less than that of the administrative staff, by mere force 
of the personalities involved, unless such a board, to pro- 
tect itself, promptly employs an inferior superintendent. 
This, however, does not necessarily happen, for men of 
superior ability may be willing to accept an honorable 
position. 

To illustrate : Such a board in a college city may include a college 
professor, and in a suburban town a metropolitan principal. Experi- 
ments in this direction are sufficiently interesting to watch. 

Meantime, it is certainly best for most communities to 
continue to expect men to serve without pay. When it is 
argued that this is to prevent poor men from serving, the 
replies are that in fact poor men are now serving honestly 
and faithfully, and that poor men who feel that they ought 
to be earning something instead of working for the schools 
for nothing have themselves diagnosed their cases cor- 
rectly. Let them resign that others, whose families do not 
suffer by such use of their time, may take their places. 

All propositions to attach a fee of two dollars for all 
board and regular committee meetings are perilous in 
the extreme. There are many men with sufficient leisure 
to hunt in politics for positions with fees (or salaries) 
attached, who would work for and in board memberships. 
To attach fees or salaries would tend to increase the num- 
ber of bo^rd memberships, Further, some men, eager for 



38 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

these extra sources of income, fees, or salaries, are not 
strong enough morally to resist bribes. 

The American conception of membership, that it is to 
be faithful but gratuitous service, is probably correct. It 
is not so hard in America to accumulate a little property, 
but that, for the present, most boards will contain men able 
and willing to serve without pay as faithfully and as suc- 
cessfully as with pay. 

Is it best to elect the board at a special city election ? 
How shall the candidates be nominated ^ By petition } 
Shall a member be eligible for over ten years' continuous 
service.? There are but two objections to electing the 
board of education at a special election. One is the 
expense of a separate election, and the other is the small 
vote cast. The expense is trivial compared with the 
importance of the interests at stake. As to the vote, it 
may be said that it will be heavy whenever the issues are 
important, and its quality will generally be high. With 
nominations upon petition, the candidates will be suffi- 
ciently numerous and independent to warrant the expecta- 
tion of securing good men. Whether members should 
be ineligible to serve after a certain number of years is a 
debatable question. The weight of opinion at the present 
time favors a discontinuance after two or three terms, but 
renewed eligibility after being out of office two years. 
" Rotation in office," however, often means the removal of 
the best-equipped men. 

It would be interesting (and it might be profitable) 
to take up in a thorough manner the various questions 
remaining to be considered in this matter of boards of 
education. But practices differ in such extreme degree 
as to make such a course altogether too long. In prac- 
tice, boards get their money in a dozen different ways. 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 39 

What is the ideal way ? Is even the best practicable way 
an approximation of the ideal way ? In practice, boards of 
nine members may have eleven committees, while boards of 
twenty-eight or forty-tive may have but three or four. In 
the ideal board of seven members, how many and what 
committees are best ? In practice, teachers are sometimes 
appointed by subcommittees, sometimes by the full board, 
sometimes by the superintendent. What is the ideal way ? 
These and several other matters must be considered both 
theoretically and in the light of experience. 

Excepting only the large communities, the plan of a 
statutory tax rate, of which the proceeds are to go to the 
public schools, is neither feasible as a theory nor desirable 
in practice. It is not feasible because in no State could 
the legislature be brought to agree as to what is a reason- 
able rate for a variety of communities. 

To illustrate: A community has 20,000 people, 5000 children, 
and $10,000,000 of property. A statutory rate of 5 mills would 
give annually to the schools $50,000, — but $10 per child. Another 
community may have 20,000 people, 4000 children, and $20,000,000 of 
property. A rate of 5 mills would give $100,000, — that is $20 per 
child.i 

In theory the statutory rate may be desirable, but in 
practice it is often injurious. A certain modification of 
it may be desirable ; namely, a provision for State grants 
based upon a State appropriation derived from taxes. By 
this system, every community is assured of at least a 
minimum amount of money. The balance is then made 
up by local taxes. 

Where there can be secured no State tax in whole or 
in part, the best way for the smaller communities to secure 
money for the schools is neither from levy by boards of 

1 In 1904, Ohio adopted a 12-mill rate. In poor communities, with many children, the 
per capita cost will certainly be reduced too low. 



40 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

education nor by appropriation of the council. The objec- 
tions to giving the board of education in schools entire 
authority are several. 

In the first place, two complete yet separate govern- 
ments with taxing power over an entire community lead 
to jealousies and wrangles. A heavy city government 
rate followed by a heavy school rate, each imposed by 
independent taxing bodies, greatly burdens and annoys the 
taxpayers, whose politicians are always in evidence. This 
separation is theoretically contrary to the best and most 
approved principles of American government.^ Centrali- 
zation of authority in mayor and council, or in mayor and 
board of works (or of estimate), in the end will produce 
the best government. This locates responsibility and leads 
to the election of the best men. 

In the second place, when the board of education is 
isolated, it is usually timid. A board that has sole power 
over the school appropriations usually does not like to draw 
too heavy a fire upon itself. Boards that can locate the 
financial responsibility outside of themselves, upon town 
meetings, city councils, boards of estimate, and statutory 
rates are usually liberal. 

To illustrate : In a certain city where the board of education must 
send its estimates to the council for approval or reduction, a consider- 
able increase was agreed upon. An opponent of the increase said that 
it was too much to ask. A majority of the board replied that if it was, 
the council could say so. Whether they voted or vetoed it, they could 
be held before the people for their action. 

In the third place, frequently when a board has such 
authority, it seldom has also the authority to bond the 
municipality for new school buildings. In consequence, 

1 An English property owner often pays taxes or rates to a dozen different authorities, 
sometimes to a score. This chaos of overlapping jurisdictions is one cause of the weakness of 
English local development. It has done very great harm to the cause of education there. 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 4 1 

new buildings must be provided for in the annual tax levy. 
In a year when new school buildings are being built, all 
other expenses are likely to be reduced.^ This is a very 
serious defect in the system. Nor is it always remediable 
by giving boards of education authority to bond the dis- 
trict for new buildings, since few boards are likely to bond 
courageously. 

The best system is certainly not where the board of 
education is subordinate to the council (or other city gov- 
erning board). For, in such cases, the higher board, being 
charged with the care of streets, police, sewers, water, and 
countless other material affairs, sees its own needs and 
unsympathetically minimizes the needs of the schools, 
and the moral and intellectual interests of the community. 
Wherever this system prevails (it is very common), the 
school appropriations tend to be niggardly. 

In the present transitional condition of American mu- 
nicipal government, some method of adjustment and of 
partial coordination between departments is the desidera- 
tum. Such a method ^ is as follows, namely : — 

A board of school estimate to be constituted for a year 
at a time by the election from the council on ballot of two 
of its members, and by the election from the board of 
education of two of its members, with the mayor or other 
chief executive officer of the municipality as the fifth 
member ; together with the secretary of the board of edu- 
cation as secretary without a vote, and the school super- 
intendent as adviser without a vote. 

* See page 83, Chapter III. 

' This method is substantially that of the State of New Jersey, which has a State tax rate 
of 2.75 mills per dollar, and a board of school estimate, besides. The exact plan of this board 
was proposed in 1899 by myself, and presented to the legislature in connection with a general 
codification, then proceeding, of all the school laws. It has operated with notable success. 
The average appropriation increase in the first year of its operation in all cities affected by 
the law was 15 per cent. The limit of the local tax is now three fourths of one per cent of 
the value of all ratables. 



42 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

This board of school estimate is empowered to appropri- 
ate whatever sums it may think proper for annual current 
expenses, and to assess the amounts upon the ratables and 
to bond the municipality for funds for permanent build- 
ings as it may see fit. 

The excellence of this plan of a board of school esti- 
mate consists in the following features : — 

First : While it leaves with the educational officers the 
majority influence, four educational councilors in seven 
persons present, it locates the majority power in the mu- 
nicipal officers, three out of five votes. When a board of 
education has a good plan to present with good reasons, it 
can usually convince the mayor or at least one councilman. 

Second: It unites the municipal government without 
unduly subordinating the board of education to the mu- 
nicipal legislative board. Such a union in knowledge and 
sympathy is very desirable. 

Third : The plan is wdse because it is not special in its 
application. It is as good for the police and street and 
sewer departments as it is for the schools. It is a plan 
that can be employed also in the matter of the board of 
health. Not that the board of school estimate need neces- 
sarily be enlarged into a board of school, health, and gen- 
eral estimate, but that special boards of estimate may 
be similarly constituted. 

Fourth : It is better than a mode of constituting the 
board of estimate of such officers as mayor, chairman of 
board of education, city treasurer, and other officers elected 
for express purposes, not necessarily legislative.^ 

1 In the discussion of this matter with the New Jersey Senate Committee on Education, as 
the originator of the plan, I argued that it is best to make four of the members of the board 
of estimate, delegates charged by the council or board of education with specific duties. I 
argued also that often a city treasurer or council finance committee chairman does not repre- 
sent the real educational views of the community. The principle is familiar in political sci- 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 43 

Good common school education is essentially a matter of 
sufficient money properly spent. 

Our next inquiry relates to the organization of the board 
of control in education. 

The first principle of such organization is to have small 
committees. The several advantages of such committees 
are similar to those of a small board of education. Two 
or three men can discuss a matter much more carefully 
than can seven or ten men. 

The second principle of such organization is to have the 
reports of the committees in form for definite discussion 
by the board. In this respect, there are extremes to be 
avoided. In no board of education should there be any 
custom of " railroading " through all the reports of com- 
mittees, and thus of making them substantially final in 
their nature. Members not on committees are clearly 
entitled, as delegates of the people, to know and to discuss 
the grounds of the conclusions of the committee. The 
other extreme is to have the report of a committee merely 
suggestive and often fragmentary. Every committee 
should report (as far as practicable) in such form that the 
board may either adopt the report as submitted or defi- 
nitely amend it. To report back a committee's report for 
further consideration delays progress, and should seldom 
be necessary. Upon all financial and other important 

ence and may be stated as follows : Never attach to an office duties not essentially involved 
in it, but, whenever possible, create delegates who are immediately responsible for the wise 
performance of their duties. A city treasurer on a board of school estimate may look upon 
that service as a side duty thrust upon him, and, though he performs it conscientiously, may 
not perform it fully. A school appropriation for permanent buildings or for current expenses 
is not a mere matter of dollars and cents. It is a problem in transmuting wealth into culture, 
transmuting matter into spirit ; in a literal sense, investing money in mind and soul. Only 
persons definitely appointed to the task and especially informed regarding its facts and prin- 
ciples can perform it adequately. 

In Massachusetts and elsewhere, conferences between school committees and boards of 
aldermen are becoming more frequent. Though informal, they accomplish often much good 
by establishing sympathy through mutual understanding. 



44 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

matters, the reports of committees should be in writing, 
and should be signed by the chairmen. 

The third principle of such organization is to have all 
committees appointed by the chairman of the board of edu- 
cation and subject to change at his desire. By accepting 
the chairmanship, a member loses both much of his influ- 
ence as a floor member in debate, and also his vote except 
upon ties. Further, he surrenders much of his right to 
leadership, and must become, as far as possible, judicial in 
his attitude upon all questions. All these are deprivations 
of power to the one man who, because he is elected chair- 
man, is doubtless the strongest man in ability and charac- 
ter, taken together, upon the board. The chairman of the 
board of education should be ex officio a member of every 
committee. 

The fourth principle is to duplicate no members in com- 
mittee membership. If necessary to appoint one man to 
two different committees, then all members should be so 
appointed to at least two committees. 

To illustrate : A board of education of seven members is regarded as 
needing five committees. There are six floor members : A, B, C, D, E, 
and F. Create committees as follows; namely: (i) A, B, C; (2) D, 
E, F ; (3) C, D ; (4) B, E ; (5) A, F. The more important commit- 
tees should have the larger number of members. 

The fifth principle is to create as few committees as 
possible, providing one committee membership for each 
member or two committee memberships for each, and 
omitting none of the members from committees. This 
principle applies to large boards after the first principle. 

To illustrate : It is better to divide a large board, of twenty-four, 
for example, into six committees of four each, than into four committees 
of six each. Since four may be taken as the extreme limit of a working 
committee, large boards are forced into over-minute subdivisions of 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 45 

their work. Here, small boards of from five to nine with their commit- 
tees of from two to three members each are at great advantage. 

Doubtless, much of the trouble that school superintend- 
ents have with school legislation is because they have 
large boards with minutely subdivided committee organi- 
zation, from which results a tendency on the part of 
board committees with little to do, to go into matters of 
school administration and of school supervision that do not 
properly concern board members who are laymen. Never- 
theless, miny small committees with minute duties are 
preferable to large committees that are little better than 
debating clubs, or else mere pawns for the real chess 
players, the board leaders. 

The sixth principle is to appoint as chairman of commit- 
tees, the old members, giving them as far as possible the 
line of work in which they have secured experience. Nice 
questions of personality, of ability, and of experience 
here often confront the board of education chairman, or 
the school superintendent, who is called upon to give 
advice. 

To illustrate: Aboard has three committees, — Buildings, Instruc- 
tion, Books and Supplies. At this particular time, new buildings are 
going up, and Buildings is recognized as the most important committee 
chairmanship. The former chairman is not returned to the board. 
The second member of the Buildings Committee and the chairmen of 
the Instruction and Supplies Committees all desire the position. To 
whom should it go? In these circumstances, the chairman of the board 
will consider the length of service on the board, the general ability, 
the leisure, etc., of each member, but, all things being equal, he will pro- 
mote the Buildings Committee member for two reasons, — because that 
member has had some special experience, and because to do so con- 
tinues the other committees in the same hands. 

The seventh principle is vital, and relates to the board 
as the employer of a supervising force : no committee is 



46 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

created that undertakes a professional duty. There is no 
committee on statistics and attendance, on supervision, on 
methods, or upon programs. Experts and specialists are 
employed to do all the executive work. A democracy 
must not expect an unsalaried and unprofessional board to 
serve professionally without pay. The principle applies 
even to the care of repairs. 

To apply these principles to the ideal board of seven, 
— we may have three committees : — 

Chairman of Board of Education — member of all com- 
mittees ex officio. 

Committee on Instruction — two members. 

Committee on Buildings — two members. 

Committee on Supplies — two members. 

The Instruction Committee deals with the salaries of 
teachers, schedules, estimates, consideration of superintend- 
ent's nominations of teachers, appeals from superintend- 
ent's rulings, truancy, complaints of parents, consideration 
of superintendent's and teachers' recommendations of 
books and courses of study, transfers of teachers, etc. 
This is peculiarly the superintendent's committee. 

Physicians, employers, men of mature years, make the ideal mem- 
bers. 

The Buildings Committee deals with sites, buildings, 
contracts, improvements, repairs, sanitation, janitors, etc. 

This committee has heavy work when new buildings are 
going up. Often it needs a special employee, a superin- 
tending architect. It has heavy work also in vacation 
time, when repairs are in progress. 

Only men of business affairs belong in this committee. 

The Supplies Committee buys text-books and supplies, 
attends to correspondence, legal affairs, and all the minor 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 47 

details. When the board of education secretary is also a 
member of the board, this is properly his committee. This 
committee often needs a special employee, the business 
manager, so called. In large cities, this committee has a 
multitude of small duties. 

Bankers, merchants, men with a little time to spare because they 
have incomes independent of daily work, are the best men for this com- 
mittee. When lawyers come upon the board, as they often do (for the 
law is the open door to all public offices), this is their committee. 

A proper subdivision of large boards is to be secured 
not by enlarging the duties of the board by encroachments 
upon those of the supervising force that manages the edu- 
cational affairs of the schools, but by judicious subdivisions 
of the board's proper duties. Large boards (above eight 
or nine) ought not to exist, except in cities of half a mil- 
lion people or more. The greatest corporations are best 
handled by small boards of directors. 

The only reasons why really large boards (over ten mem- 
bers for places under a quarter of a million) are endured, 
are two ; namely : — 

First: Many cities have not yet secured educational 
superintendents who understand the real duties of their 
position and who propose to discharge them. Most boards 
employ clerks or agents, not superintendents in even the 
business meaning of that term. In such places, the boards 
are doing incompetently much work that really does not 
belong to them. 

Second : The people in general entirely misconceive 
the proper and the usual duties of the board. 

Of this, illustrations are too numerous even to classify. 

Some of these misconceptions spring from tradition and 
from sheer lack of effort to find the facts. The tradi- 
tion is that the "school trustee" "hires" the teacher and 



48 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

manages him as long as he stays in the school, and then 
** hires " another teacher. By this tradition, the *' school 
trustee " is the sole authority. The *' trustee," for the time 
being, represents, almost is, the sovereign people. From 
this tradition, in its countless forms and applications, spring 
all manner of ideas and actions, including, indeed, most of 
the laws upon the statute-books of our various States. 

To illustrate : In a certain city, a parent called upon a board mem- 
ber and remarked : " Of course, you have so many teachers under you, 
I suppose you have to give your entire time to the work. You must 
get tired going to school every day." 

In the same city, a memorial was drawn up and signed by several 
citizens, advising the board to discharge the superintendent, upon the 
ground that the board was "misappropriating the people's money in 
employing a man to do things the board is elected to do." 

The plain people have usually a great deal of good com- 
mon sense, but they rely for most of it upon oral tradition ; 
and school superintendents are too recent a product of our 
cultural evolution to be well understood by most people. 

With regard to the appointment of teachers, in compari- 
son with the overwhelming importance of the matter, very 
little needs to be said, but this must be said emphatically 
and unequivocably. The American system of government 
is that of checks and balances. Our government, both 
National and State, is divided into the legislative, the execu- 
tive, and the judicial departments. Our legislatures are 
bicameral ; our executives are responsible alike to the leg- 
islature and to the courts; our judges alone are inde- 
pendent, but only so long as they themselves are honest 
and of good report. In the school government, we have 
an incomplete development of this system. The board of 
education is the entire legislature ; and it elects the execu- 
tive officers, whose incidental judicial authority is subject 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 49 

to appeal to the board. The board is indeed the people, in 
the democratic sense. It has, or can take back to itself, 
all the legal powers, as far as it has such powers, by State 
laws and by its own resolutions in accordance therewith. 

This board of laymen, having neither time nor inclina- 
tion for executive work, selects a supervising officer, or 
several such officers, for that work. The body of electors, 
the popular democracy, has, indeed, strange views regard- 
ing the duties of board members, but no voter supposes 
that the elected board members are " to teach school," or 
that they are competent to teach school. If not competent 
and not expected to teach, they are certainly not competent 
to decide who are competent to teach. 

No doubt, most boards of education actually decide every 
year, or rather go through the form of deciding, who the 
teachers are to be. Even where there are school super- 
intendents, often they are not consulted. There is a popu- 
lar idea that, though no one of a dozen men knows much 
of anything about school-teaching, the entire dozen, as 
a body, has an expert, and therefore a valuable, opinion 
on the subject. This is an interesting aspect of the popular 
belief in America, Vox populi^ vox dei. It is often true 
that the best man on a board will persuade the rest to 
adopt his opinions. It is occasionally true that, after con- 
sideration and discussion, a body of men will come to a 
wiser conclusion than any one man could reach alone ; but 
it is always true that no stream can rise higher than its 
source. No board of laymen can possibly know once a 
year as much about teachers and teaching as a single expert 
knows any day and every day. 

That a doctor of medicine knows more about health and disease 
than any number of laymen, no one would seriously question. His 
profession is publicly and unanimously recognized. Until the individual 



50 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

is proven a failure, the physician is taken at face value. But in educa- 
tion there is no presumption of expert knowledge. The individual 
teacher must prove that he possesses skill far beyond that of the lay- 
man. Then as a recognized master of the science and art of teaching, 
the school administrator may be considered sufficiently wise and respon- 
sible to nominate teachers, to select text-books, and to plan courses of 
study. 

For towns and cities with superintendents, there is but 
one correct method of appointing, transferring, and dis- 
charging teachers : — 

1. To elect a superintendent competent to take the initi- 
ative in all such matters. This often involves discharging 
a superintendent incompetent to perform the duty. This 
may sometimes be done decently by offering him a princi- 
palship or a subordinate supervisorship. 

2. To lodge in the superintendent the sole right to 
nominate teachers or to suggest their transfer or dis- 
charge. Then to hold the superintendent responsible for the 
visible results in school discipline, progress, and interest. 

3. To make rules upon which the superintendent must 
base all his nominations and other recommendations. 

To illustrate: A rule that every high school teacher must hold a 
certain license, one of whose features may be a college diploma. 

4. To retain the veto upon all recommendations, in the 
form of a requirement that all appointments are to be 
made by the board in regular meeting upon the superin- 
tendent's nomination. Such are the main lines of the only 
correct method. 

Some communities have now advanced as far as to direct the school 
superintendent to appoint all temporary teachers, retaining for the board 
the responsibility only of final and permanent appointments. 

The other two methods of appointment of teachers are 
both bad. There is the common method, in small places, 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 5 1 

of permitting any board member to make nominations. 
This is sometimes limited by a requirement that only the 
teachers' committee can nominate. This method is simply 
politics, though it may be called by other and more at- 
tractive names. It is politics because no layman can make 
a professional decision. It may be religious or social or 
partisan politics, or it may be merely the politics of person- 
ality for acquaintance' sake. And it may be the politics of 
factionalism. The politician board member ma}?- deny the 
impeachment. I have known superintendents (who never 
dared to nominate a teacher) say that their teachers were 
always selected by the board impartially. It cannot be so, 
unless the applicants are taken in order of application, 
" first come, first served." This method actually does 
obtain in not a few places, which means that many incom- 
petent teachers are employed in American free common 
schools. Unless the board does this ignorantly, it is 
recreant to its trust, false to childhood and youth, and 
treacherous to the community and to the nation. And 
if the board appoints all applicants in ignorance of what 
competence is, then only the good Father of us all can 
save that community, for in it the light is darkness. It is 
the duty of every school superintendent as a good citizen, 
loyal to his country, to try to send some light into that 
community, wherever it may be, as soon as he knows of its 
plight. It cannot save itself. 

When a board tries to choose between applicants, politics is the only 
standard. Her sponsor says, " This girl is So-and-So's daughter; her 
teachers say this ; her pastor says that ; she talks thus well ; and dresses 
and looks such-and-such a way." No man knows how much she under- 
stands of the work that she has offered to do, how well she can teach, 
how fairly she can adjust herself to subjects, to grades, and to pupils 
of the position to be filled. Instead, extraneous matters are brought 
in. " Her parents are dead or poor or ambitious." "It will please A 



52 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

or X to see her appointed." " We ought to encourage the graduates 
of our high school." After her appointment, no one is responsible for 
her success or for her failure. In a headless school system, no one is 
likely to know that she is a failure unless she fails so utterly that she 
voluntarily resigns. 

I have used the word " girl " with two purposes. When laymen 
appoint, they deal with a human being as such, not with the human 
being elevated to a profession, the girl become the woman teacher. 
The professional school superintendent has in mind, not her claims, but 
those of his pupils and of their parents ; he deals with the higher 
personality, the woman of culture. In the second place, I desired 
to present first the simple politics of the laymen who select female 
teachers. 

When a board of education, unenlightened by a competent expert 
educator, undertakes to appoint a man to any position, and especially 
when this appointment is to a position as principal, or as a subordinate 
supervisor, politics are usually flagrant. Because the man is a voter, 
the question of his politics, whether Republican or Democratic, or 
neither, comes forward. Whether he belongs to a church or not, and 
if to a church, to what church, must be known and discussed. Of what 
societies, open or secret, he is a member, must be known. When 
married, the question of wife and children enters in. Now all these 
matters may be interesting, but they all relate to the man as a man, not 
as a teacher. 

To illustrate : In a certain small community, there were three prom- 
inent religious denominations. A man was to be chosen as high 
school first assistant. The supervising principal was of denomination 
A, the president of the board of education was of denomination B, the 
secretary of the board was of denomination C. The board, unenlight- 
ened by the principal, passed a resolution to bar all candidates belong- 
ing to any one of these denominations. As the board was unanimously 
of a certain party, it was well understood that only a man who was a 
member of that party and not a member of denominations A, B, or C, 
was eligible. The final selection aroused such animosity in that town 
as to make the life of the successfiil candidate there unendurable, and 
he resigned at midyear. 

No true wisdom can reasonably be expected when 
teachers are selected without professional advice, for lay- 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 53 

men are necessarily blind to the essential qualities of 
teachers, both male and female. These essential qualities 
can be enumerated ; but in the living persons of candidates, 
only the expert can recognize them. 

But it will be remarked, sometimes members of a board 
may really know more about human nature than the 
superintendent of schools. However, when it is true that 
upon any board of education there is a single man actually 
more competent to select teachers than the superintendent, 
that board needs a new superintendent. It may be ob- 
jected that some man on the board seems to be a genius 
in reading human nature. If so, the trained talent of 
the school superintendent should be still more expert in 
selecting the person whose human nature is skilled in teach- 
ing. Or, it may be objected that the remarkable board 
member is rich or famous or accustomed to power, while 
the school superintendent is only a school superintendent, 
that is, a poor man, not famous or accustomed to power or 
able to take it. If so, then get an educator who is able to 
wrench the power of selecting teachers from the usurpers 
of that power. 

I use that term "usurpers" advisedly.^ I desire to 
emphasize it. Historically, nothing is more preposterous 
than the coup by which boards of education, when first 
created by State laws, proceeded to show their new power 
by selecting teachers unprofessionally. Democracy, seek- 
ing intelligence as the sole means of its own preservation, 
found that it must take possession of the schools ; to do so, 
it organized boards of education. The original purposes 
of these boards were to multiply schools until all children 
were educated sufficiently to be safe citizens, and to sup- 
port financially the persons who teach in the schools. 

1 See Chapter IX, p. 240. 



54 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

This second purpose is the more important, though the 
less obvious. Before democracy secularized and sup- 
ported education, the number of teachers was relatively 
much smaller than it is now. The reason for this was that 
most persons who desired to teach could not find enough 
paying pupils to provide them with sufficient means for 
livelihood. In other words, most parents were too poor 
(and indeed are yet) to pay for the schooling of their chil- 
dren. To provide a means, then, of taxing property so that 
all children might be instructed, was the important pur- 
pose of free common education under public boards of 
education. This does not mean that great "bugaboo," 
raising or increasing the salaries of teachers ; it means 
simply providing the salaries of teachers. 

The first boards of education did not select the teachers. 
A careful examination of early school records affords con- 
vincing evidence that when the old " pay " schools were 
converted into free schools, the old teachers were con- 
tinued. The first boards in the older States, the boards 
that superseded proprietary principals, many of them liv- 
ing from hand to mouth upon tuitions, never undertook to 
select principals and teachers. The mode of replacement 
was always very simple. The principal-teacher filled the 
vacancy when a teacher left ; the next assistant was duly 
promoted where the principal-teacher left. This means 
that the board did not interfere in professional affairs. 
Those early boards of our forefathers never dreamed of 
preparing without professional advice courses of study and 
rules and regulations for teachers and scholars. 

There was, however, a large number of schools with but 
one teacher. When that teacher left, he could not sell out 
as in the former days. He sometimes did recommend a 
successor. Sometimes, however, the boards were forced 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 55 

to exercise a choice, and from these country districts of 
one-teacher schools the custom of the selection of teachers 
by boards spread to all schools.^ It was all part and par- 
cel of the great democratic movement. Even the essen- 
tially undemocratic school, that most aristocratic of all 
institutions, succumbed to the doctrine that the people 
must rule. By the very definition of school, the fallacy 
of complete democratic control becomes apparent. A 
school is a relation between superior and inferior in 
which the superior deliberately and openly sets out to 
impart knowledge to, and to develop the powers of, the 
inferior, and in which the inferior is definitely required to 
submit to the authority of the superior. 

The reason why the fallacy was not at once apparent is 
this. Every adult regards himself as superior to every 
child. Therefore, any adult may serve as the teacher of 
any child. Conclusion, any board of adults is competent 
to select those official superiors of the children, the teach- 
ers, for any adults who are willing to do the work are 
sufficiently competent. 

It does not serve to answer that the premise, "Any 
adult is superior to any child," is untrue, though in the 
higher grades at least some youths are manifestly superior 
in ability, character, and knowledge to many adults. For 
the counter answer is quick to come that any board of 
education would be unlikely to appoint as a teacher a 
man or woman inferior in ability, character, and knowl- 
edge to a considerable number of the students. 

There is, indeed, but one adequate criticism of the plan 

1 In early New England, the church-town often selected the public teacher, and fixed the 
income that he was to receive from fees. At that period there was no " board of education" 
or "school trustee" or school "visitor." The election of the teacher was by pure 
democracy. The nomination was usually made by the one well-educated man in the town, 
the pastor. 



56 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

of board selection of teachers ; this criticism is a challenge, 
and only the competent are safe in making it. This criti- 
cism has already been stated clearly. Teaching is a pro- 
fession that renders an expert service ; consequently, only 
experts can decide with uniform wisdom and success re- 
garding the qualifications of members or would-be mem- 
bers of the profession. 

It was the issuance of this challenge, and the proof of it 
upon public trial, that converted surgery from the occupa- 
tion of the barber-leech to the profession of to-day. The 
fact that teachers must issue the challenge does not, as is in- 
deed claimed by some of our critics, amount to a confession 
that there is no profession of teaching. On the contrary, 
the fact of the challenge cries with a loud voice that a 
profession has come into being. Educators insist that at 
no point in the public school system may laymen properly 
step in to interfere with the due order of its educational 
affairs^ either by examining applicants for entrance into 
the profession, or by reexamining teachers for promotion 
to any higher positions, or by selecting teachers for any 
positions, or by transferring or discharging any. Let us 
not merely concede the right of the people to govern their 
schools : let us rather proclaim the right, desiring to see 
democracy in control of all schools, private and endowed, 
kindergarten and university. But to proclaim the right to 
govern schools is not to concede a right to misgovern 
them, for to misgovern the schools is to transform them 
from schools into institutions with places for revenue. A 
person holding a teacher's position and drawing a teacher's 
salary who is not professionally recognized as competent 
is not a teacher, but a public pensioner, a political annui- 
tant, a pauper almoner. Not every person in every class 
room of America is ready to do the work God means to be 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 57 

done there. Pupils, parents, employers, friends, citizens, 
board members, daily testify to this fact. Often, the fact 
is obvious to all, where none sees the remedy ; more often, 
many see the remedy that the majority are unwilling to 
apply. The idea of the control of the schools in their 
least detail is dear to many who have few other oppor- 
tunities to exercise power. 

The true analogue of a school system in a community of ten to 
twenty thousand people is a manufacturing corporation employing five 
thousand persons. The board of capitalist-directors corresponds with 
the board of citizen-commissioners, the manager corresponds with the 
school superintendent, the foremen correspond with the teachers, the 
employees at their routine tasks correspond with the pupils, young and 
old, at their desks or at the laboratory tables, and the public of com- 
mercial consumers corresponds with the public of critical parents and 
friends. In this analogue, there is but one serious defect. In the 
business factory, the employees are making things as their product; 
in the school factory, the pupils are making themselves as their 
product. 

As an analogue of the school system, the great factory with its vari- 
ous shops is exceedingly instructive in several features. One of these 
is valuable in respect to instruction. As the foremen do not actually 
make the products, so the teachers do not make the pupils. Of the 
factory, we say that the workmen produce the goods ; so ought we to 
say of the school, that the children make their new and better selves. 
It is not the teaching, not the instruction, that makes the great school, 
but the learning, the self-activity, of the students. Herein, appears a 
vital principle, which it is well for the expert educators to emphasize to 
lay school commissioners : it is not what knowledge the teacher has 
that makes the good teacher, it is not even what skill the teacher has 
in imparting knowledge ; it is solely what art the teacher displays in 
inducing the students to learn knowledge and to work for the devel- 
opment of skill. 

In the history of the world, this idea of teaching as an 
art is not new. Before the days of Jesus, it was discussed 
amply by Socrates. He called him the greatest philosopher 



58 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

and the best teacher, who, like an accoiicU'eur^ assists at 
the birth of the learner's ideas. Upon that analysis, we 
cannot improve. Jesus, the greatest of teachers, made 
the central principle of His system, the truth, "Ye must be 
born again." The process of a true education, of a real 
unfolding of a human mind, is indeed a series of new 
births, of regenerations, by which man's eternal youth is 
forever being renewed, by which the human life is forever 
growing into the larger life of the divine, whence we spring. 
Upon the very face of this discussion appears the truth 
that here is a matter of vast and deep import, not less vast 
and deep than the matters that concern the priest and 
minister, the surgeon and physician, the judge and the 
advocate. The impartial man, with no interests to serve, 
with no position to maintain, with no traditions to obey, — 
such a man will regret that, as a school board member, he 
has any duties to observe in connection with the employ- 
ment of the members of the teaching profession and with 
their assignments to particular kinds of service. Because 
he is impartial, disinterested, thoughtful, and free, because 
he takes up his duty as the delegate of the democracy, 
with reluctance and self-distrust, he makes a good board 
member. Not the eager, but the judicial, make the compe- 
tent legislators, judges, and administrators. In respect to 
the selection and transfer and discharge of teachers, this 
duty is simple and important. 

The good father who employs a physician to attend his children 
reserves the right, not to decide whether the practitioner is or is not a 
physician, nor even whether or not this or that remedy prescribed is 
good, but simply whether or not the physician is sufficiently successful 
to be continued in the family practice. Once employed, the physician 
is trusted wholly. The analogy with the good school commissioner is 
complete. He reserves, not the right to say whether or not this person 
is a teacher, nor whether this or that study or method in a study is 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 59 

good, but simply whether the teacher is sufficiently successful to be 
retained.^ 

The foregoing treatment of the all-important, because 
fundamental, subject of the board of control in education 
will doubtless seem strange to many superintendents, in- 
deed, to most. The cause for surprise is plain. Only in 
a few centers of progress are these ideas familiar. I do 
not desire to avoid any part of the responsibility for any or 
all results that may follow my candid publication of the 
cause. Such a publication is greatly needed in these times, 
— needed for the rescue as far as may be, of millions of 
children from inadequate educational opportunities; needed 
for the good of this great nation in its domestic, colonial, 
and international affairs ; needed for the promotion of the 
vital interests of humanity, which are intelligence, energy, 
efficiency, justice, sympathy, opportunity, and freedom. 

In America, there are not now a sufficient number of 
good boards of education, rationally organized, with com- 
petent members. Most school superintendents have never 
known by experience what a good board of education 
really is. No doubt, nearly all school superintendents 
have had some good board members. A smaller number 
have had some good boards. Very few school superin- 
tendents have known what it is to have a thoroughly good 
board for a series of years. For myself, I never permit 
myself (or, when I can prevent it, any other school super- 
intendent) to criticise a fellow-superintendent for success 
or failure until I know with what kind of a board he has 
had to deal. I have known many competent men to fail 
solely because the members of their boards were distinctly 
unfit to perform the duties of board membership. 

1 This topic is discussed further, and this principle is carried out to its logical conclusions, 
in Chapter IV, " Supervision." 



6o ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

By the failure of a school superintendent, I mean these 
things, any or all of them : — 

First, failure to place his teaching force upon a strictly 
professional basis. 

Second, failure to secure for all new buildings scientific 
arrangements for blackboards, lighting, heating, ventila- 
tion, and sanitation, and adequate provisions for play- 
grounds, kindergartens, manual training, science, physical 
training, and music, with their due equipment. 

Third, failure to secure a modern course of study with 
professional control of all its details. 

Fourth, failure to win reasonable, frequent, and timely 
increases of salaries for the teachers, and improvement of 
their tenure with pensions for old age. 

Fifth, freedom for himself to deal solely with profes- 
sional affairs, leaving politics to outsiders, finance to board 
members, business details to the clerical employees of the 
board. 

I call the superintendency of that man a failure whose 
board selects the teachers, who cannot get adequate funds 
for new buildings, who has not the control of the course 
of study after its formal adoption, whose advice is not fol- 
lowed in changes in the course, whose years in his office 
have not been marked by advances in salaries, or who must 
spend a greater or a smaller part of his time in political or 
petty business affairs. I call him a failure in the superin- 
tendency, though I am willing to recognize that in many 
cases, perhaps in most, the potent cause may lie outside of 
himself. 

To make this perfectly clear, I will illustrate what I 
mean by a poor or a bad board member.^ 

* Earlier in this chapter I presented what seem to me the fundamental conditions for a 
good board. Without those conditions, a board is necessarily not a good board. Sec also 
Chapter V, " The Superintendent." 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 6 1 

First, the openly dishonest man. He is often noisy; owns his 
ward ; defies exposure ; threatens his opponents ; fights his enemies ; 
bullies the superintendent, or tries to ; terrorizes the local school prin- 
cipal; "stands in" with the local janitor; takes bribes, "grafts," 
gifts, in whatever form they are offered ; knows nothing, or affects to 
know nothing, of ethics ; and exemplifies the principle, " Nothing suc- 
ceeds like success." 

He is not common upon boards of education. There are not ordi- 
narily enough opportunities for him, to furnish inducements to stay 
on in the office. He serves a term or two, and while he serves, brings 
discredit upon all his associates. 

A school superintendent, to render such a man harmless, must be of 
perfect moral health and of uncommon moral vigor, for there is only 
one way to deal with him. That way is to make war on him, in season 
and out of season. Never spare him. Perhaps the very first element 
of character that a good school superintendent needs is that "Fear 
does not sit between his eyes." The offensively dangerous man affords 
the competent school superintendent an excellent opportunity to demon- 
strate his courage. Unquestionably, when the war is on, it may 
possibly terminate in the immediate defeat of the school superin- 
tendent. However, defeat by an openly dishonest man, marshaling 
such forces as support such a character, seldom results in loss of 
livelihood. On the contrary, a school superintendent strong enough 
to do heavy battle for good schools is likely to rise from defeat to 
a still better position. In America, the actively righteous are seldom 
forsaken. 

Second, the quietly dishonest man. It takes some time after going 
to a new community for a school superintendent to find him out. Some- 
times, when such a man comes as a new member upon the board, he 
behaves so well for a time as to deceive the very elect. The fact that 
he is quiet in his "deals," or attempts at "deals," gives the superintendent 
his hint as to the method of dealing with him — publicity. Such a man 
is very dangerous until he is discovered. When discovered and adver- 
tised, he is almost certain to resign. He is certain to cease to be active 
upon the board. 

It may be objected that it is not the business of a school superin- 
tendent to cleanse his board of education. ^ If not, whose business is 

1 In Chapter V, I discuss the question of the kind of morality every superintendent owes 
to himself and to his school system. 



62 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

it ? A good superintendent is a faithful shepherd of his flock. The 
wolf must be driven away, and the viper crushed. 

.Third, the densely ignorant man. Strange as it may seem, the com- 
petent school superintendent need have no trouble at all with the 
densely ignorant man who is not dishonest. Such men seldom are dis- 
honest or vicious. The densely ignorant man may be rich, or he may 
be poor. When he is rich, he is usually parsimonious, though not 
always so. When he is poor, he is usually timid. The certainty in the 
condition of the densely ignorant man is that he is always ready to be 
led. This gives the real superintendent, the capable man, his oppor- 
tunity. Let him deal very candidly and very thoroughly with this man, 
affording him abundant data in every matter that concerns the board in 
its control of the schools. 

A school superintendent who will invariably deal with justice and 
candor and thoroughness in all educational matters can soon establish 
such an influence — the influence of character — over a densely ignorant 
man as to control his vote. God has chosen to make ignorant men 
hearty admirers of the strong and of the clear-headed who are kind and 
patient and who remember that the field of teaching is not confined to 
the instruction of the young. 

To illustrate : A densely ignorant man was elected to a board of 
education upon a pledge to reduce the power of the superintendent and, 
under certain conditions, to secure either his resignation or his dis- 
charge. The new board member was a man who had first made him- 
self wealthy by his own efforts, and then was made rich by a series of 
deaths, by which a remote fortune fell to him. He was an uncommonly 
far-handed and far-sighted business man, — a merchant, a real estate 
dealer, and a contractor. He could see a dollar through a ledge of rock, 
and when he believed that it could be gotten for ninety-nine cents' 
worth of labor, would hire the laborer and then drive him so that ninety- 
eight cents' worth of labor would get the dollar. This man, when he 
came upon the board, believed three things, namely : that the school 
superintendent had developed a high school whose course was fully 
equal to that of any college ; that the superintendent violated rules and 
regulations of the board whenever he chose to do so; and that the 
superintendent misrepresented the financial expenditures in relation to 
the statistics of attendance. 

This particular school superintendent knew his man and went all 
the way to meet him. Before the third regular monthly meeting had 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 63 

passed, a local politician said to the superintendent : " We put that man 
on the board to defeat you. He is now one of your strongest sup- 
porters. How did you convert him? " The truth was that this particu- 
lar board member, like all ignorant men, valued absolute facts as beyond 
price. He had found out, by close examination of the record, that the 
educator was exactly as honest and as industrious in his profession as 
he, the business man, was in his occupation. Therefore, though not 
converted to the cause of educational progress, he supported the school 
superintendent loyally, whether he understood him or not. 

One such victory in the camp of the enemies of good schools is never 
forgotten in the community, and adds greatly to the prestige of the edu- 
cator's office. It shows that a competent superintendent can manage 
men, as well as teachers and children. It is, however, unfortunate to be 
compelled to treat a board of education as a board for education. ^ 

Fourth, the unmoral and the immoral man. In the course of the 
vagaries of American municipal politics, it occasionally happens that 
some unmoral, or even immoral, man is thrust upon a board of educa- 
tion, to sit as a guardian within the gates of those holy temples of learn- 
ing, the common schools. Americans are characteristically so virtuous 
that reduced school appropriations, establishments of private schools to 
take the children of clean homes, withdrawal of public support in cases 
of school discipline, a widening chasm between the great body of the 
teachers and the school authorities, and an antagonistic relation of the 
homes to the schools are all certain to follow. 

A competent school superintendent, irrespective of his own character, 
sees ruin ahead when this kind of man begins to make himself felt in 
school affairs. The only question is how to turn that ruin from the 
schools upon the offending board member. The mode of dealing with 
the man must be determined by all the circumstances ; but the motive, 
the purification of the school system, and the purpose, the speediest 
removal of the board member, are immutable. His conversion is not 
enough. No one will believe in that. The superintendent must clean 
house, making as little dust and as little din as possible, but thoroughly 
accomplishing the moral sanitation. The American people desire and 
will have their teachers, men and women, so clean in morals as to be 
above and beyond reproach and remote from suspicion. The immoral 
man must be coaxed or driven out of the board, and the school em- 
ployees who have erred must go with him. 

1 See page i66. 



64 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Fifth, the mere politician. The board members of our munici- 
palities, village, town, and city, may be conveniently and universally 
classified under six heads, two main, and four subordinate, as follows ; 
namely : — 

1 . Self-interested 

2. Partisan 

3. Disinterested 
Board members -{ I 4- Patriotic 



I . Politicians 



2. Not politicians 



The man who is not a politician is not likely to serve many terms in 
any progressive community. I have defined a politician elsewhere as a 
man who without visible or known sources of private income gives his 
time, or a considerable part of it, in office or out of office, to public 
affairs, and thereby secures an income larger than honest people can 
fairly explain to their own satisfaction and justify in ethics and 
morals. I am now about to use the word in a broader and a better 
sense, to mean the man who gives a large amount of his time and 
of his thought to public affairs, in an effort to direct their course not 
solely by the inherent value of the plans that he advocates. The true 
politician effects his plans (or affects those of other men) by considera- 
tions extraneous to their own merit. He is a " log-roller " and exchanges 
the advocacy of a plan for one matter in return for the advocacy of a plan 
for a different matter. His influence can be bargained for, as also may 
his opposition. He is ready to threaten or to cajole. He is not necessarily 
corrupt in the sense of getting gains in money or its equivalent for him- 
self or his friends, but he is necessarily capable of simulation and dis- 
simulation, and of considering a proposition in the light of its policy 
and of its relation to other policies. 

The self-interested politician is one whose first concern is his own 
welfare. His influence upon a board of public control is debasing. He 
is apt to be corrupt and to fall under the classification of the first or 
second heads, above, of poor or bad board members. 

The partisan politician is one who considers every move that he 
makes, or that those associated with him in the board of education 
make, in its relation to the advancement of his own party. He desires 
to have the school superintendent and the janitors of his own party. 
He discusses the school appropriation in relation to the tax rate because 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 65 

his party will have to stand for it, or against it, as a feature of partisan 
administration or opposition. 

The disinterested politician is one who mixes in public affairs for the 
joy of being a part of the public life of the community. He is not work- 
ing for himself, or for his friends, or for his party, or for any church, or 
for any person or institution whatever. He is an individual. He is a 
" free lance." He has energy and intelligence. Often he is a " crank " ; 
sometimes he is a genius ; always he is a disturbing factor because, 
where he is, things move. He can be converted sometimes into a poli- 
tician of the next and higher class. Until he is thus converted, he is 
a constant source of anxiety to the friends of good schools. 

The patriotic politician is neither a poor nor a bad board member, 
and his presence is to be welcomed. 

Sixth, and last : Among the undesirable board members'is the man 
who half understands, and thinks he wholly understands, what his busi- 
ness as a board member is, and what the schools now are, and in the 
future ought to be. This is a man of very great harmfulness to the 
schools. He thinks " he knows it all," and his conceit sustains his 
pride by giving him dogmas to support. Among the things that he 
thinks he knows are these, namely : — 

1. That the schools are not as good as they were when he went to 
school. 

2. That certain studies, those he enjoyed and those whose results 
he remembers, are the only ones worth keeping in the course of 
study. 

3. That a tax rate higher than is an unwarranted outrage, irre- 
spective of paramount public interests. 

4. That the presence of certain studies^ for example, Greek, or 
kindergarten, or woodworking, or shorthand, or " Nature," or physical 
training, or elocution, is an intolerable offense to common sense. 

5. That the principals in all schools ought to teach all day long. 

6. That the ofRce of the superintendent is a sinecure. 

7. That school sessions are too short, and that there ought to be no 
home study. (Or that the sessions are too long, and that there ought 
to be more home study.) 

8. That the last year of the school course that he pursued went as 
far as any boy or girl ought to go, because, " No one needs to know 
any more." He has " succeeded without a high school (or advanced 
grammar school) education." 



66 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

9. That there are " too many " lawyers, preachers, physicians, and 
teachers. 

ID. That all high-salaried men are overpaid. 

Further, he always has an opinion ready, upon one side or the other, 
of every school question, however debatable it may seem to experts, 
and especially however much the answer ought, in the opinions of the 
experts, to depend upon special conditions and circumstances of the 
school system and community. He is sure that he knows whether or 
not — 

1 . Boys and girls ought to be taught together in all classes and in 
all grades. 

2. Men are superior to women as school principals. 

3. Women are superior to men as class teachers. 

4. Female college graduates are preferable to male normal school 
graduates as teachers in the higher grades of the elementary schools. 

5. Pensions are desirable for superannuated teachers. 

6. The high school of a small city should offer a complete course 
in the sciences, — physiology, botany, zoology, biology, astronomy, 
geology, physics, chemistry, mineralogy, physiography, — before offer- 
ing a complete course in the major languages, — Latin, Greek, French, 
German, Spanish ; or he knows just how far each should be devel- 
oped at the expense of the other. 

7. Kindergartens are to be introduced and extended before or after 
manual training, or physical training, or summer vacation schools. 

8. The salaries of the teachers are low in proportion to the salaries 
of the principals and supervisors. 

9. It is best to lower the salary of the superintendency a thousand 
dollars so as to add ten dollars a year to the salary of each of a hun- 
dred teachers ; or to raise it by a thousand dollars at the cost of with- 
holding twenty-five dollars' increase from each of forty successful 
teachers. 

10. Public educational evening paid school entertainments belong 
to the jurisdiction of the board or of the supervisory force. 

11. It best conduces to the welfare of the community to have tru- 
ants and incorrigibles compelled to attend school in the regular classes 
even at the cost of the interrupted order, peace, and progress of the 
obedient children. 

12. Janitors, by their own labor or at their own expense, should 
thoroughly clean the school buildings each summer. 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 6/ 

13. School buildings are best heated by steam or by hot air, and 
best ventilated by " plenum " or " exhaust " fans. 

14. One-sided or two-sided rear-and-side lighting is best in class 
rooms. 

15. Assembly rooms ought to be on first, second, third, or fourth 
floors. Or, there ought not to be any assembly rooms. 

16. High and grammar school principals should give their official 
indorsement to school athletic games. 

There is but one way to deal with this omniscient man, and that is 
to teach him more. Since he is an adult, this teaching must be done 
with such tact that he never suspects it. Rather, he must be led to 
welcome the visits of the superintendent and the various reports and 
letters as suggestions for him to act upon. Unless the superintendent 
keeps the mind of the man who knows full of new information and 
ideas, the man who knows will control the board, upon the principle 
that in a democracy we follow those just above us far more readily than 
those greatly superior to us. The confident man who half knows easily 
secures the support of the timid and of the ignorant. 

Another matter of vital concern to the schools and with 
which the board of education in most small communities 
deals directly, is the selection of janitors. To the disin- 
terested, intelligent private citizen, the principles that 
should govern the selection of janitors are obvious, but 
disinterested, intelligent citizens once upon boards of edu- 
cation are no longer private persons; their ideas often 
change radically as soon as they are in public office. 
These ethical and economic principles may be summarized 
without discussion : — 

First : Every janitor ought to be a virtuous and honest man. 

Second : He ought to be an intelligent man, experienced and skill- 
ful, or competent quickly to acquire skill, in all matters relating to 
fiirnaces, boilers, mechanical apparatus, walls, roofs, floors, furniture, 
coal, gas, applied electricity, lawns, walks, snow, rain, heat, cold, water, 
lighting, sanitation ; in short, whatever matters concern his position as 
the caretaker of buildings and grounds. 

Third : He ought to be well informed in matters of public law and 



68 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

of municipal regulations ; he is the guardian of public property, a day 
and night watchman, with certain police powers. 

Fourth : He ought to be of decent personal appearance and of good 
manners, especially in relation to the pupils. 

The fact that a candidate for a position as janitor is a political party 
worker, even a reliable ward heeler, or even a successful ward politician, 
should be against him, not in his favor, for two reasons : the people 
will certainly misconstrue the motives that led to his selection ; and 
after his appointment his friends will probably force him to continue to 
be a party man. 

Whenever the fact that a candidate is a party worker or a ward 
politician helps to his appointment, the community is in danger of the 
actual conditions in certain places where janitors sit with board mem- 
bers at board meetings, and the school superintendents are denied their 
professional rights to nominate teachers. 

In one such community, besides the regular twelve months' salary, 
which exceeded that of the school principals, each janitor was allowed 
$150 summer vacation money and as many tons of coal as his family 
required. Such is the topsy-turvydom that results from appointing as 
" employees " political " bosses." 

To the school superintendent who after election finds 
that his board holds in saloons its informal meetings that 
decide everything, or that his board is too busy smoking 
tobacco and telling stories and making political plans to 
attend to the public business in hand at the regular fort- 
nightly or monthly business meeting, or that a quorum is 
almost impossible to get so that one man really runs all 
the business affairs, some suggestions may prove helpful. 

Secure, quietly if possible, forcibly if necessary, the right 
to attend all board meetings, and see that notice is sent as 
regularly to the superintendent's office as to the address of 
any board member. 

Be prompt at all board meetings. Even when not sum- 
moned, appear. 

To illustrate : In a certain community, in the week preceding his 
reelection at the close of his first term, a certain school superintendent 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 69 

heard that his board of education was to hold a special meeting to 
which he had not been summoned, to approve the purchase of a certain 
lot immediately upon a railroad line, a lot that he regarded as entirely 
unsuitable for a school location, because of the noise and the danger. 
He went to the meeting. A resolution to purchase was offered. From 
the tone of the meeting, he saw that the purchase was to be carried 
through. He rose and said : " If this board decides to purchase that 
land, I shall call a public meeting. I shall write to every newspaper. 
I hope to be reelected next week at a higher salary. Nevertheless, I 
will protest in the interests of the school children." 

" Do you really mean that ? " asked the chairman of the building 
and sites committee. 

" I most certainly do," was the reply of the educator. 

There was a long pause, it is said. Several minutes passed. " Then," 
up spoke the chairman, " if you are sincere, I will withdraw my reso- 
lution." 

" I mean every word," replied the superintendent. 

Whereupon the resolution was withdrawn. 

Is it any wonder that this particular educator, ten years later, was in 
the employ of the same community, with an almost entirely changed 
board, at nearly twice the salary he had received at first ? Yet in that 
community the story of this occurrence was never spread abroad. 

The world is ready to recognize and to pay for sheer courage in 
school superintendents. 

Remember that whatever the board members may think, 
most of the citizens really do hold the teachers (including 
the superintendent) responsible for the actual conditions 
of the schools. They know that board members come and 
go ; they see the changes, but they see also the relative 
permanence of the supervisors and teachers. Moreover, in 
their hearts, the plain people feel that the teachers make the 
schools ; that they can, when they wish, reform the board. 

Do not deal in general politics save as a private citizen. 
Whether the nation, the State, the county, or the city 
is Republican, or Democratic, Socialist, Prohibitionist, 
Socialist-Labor, or Mugwump, is indeed the concern of the 



70 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

school superintendent as a private citizen ; but whether it 
is for or against free schools, generously maintained, is his 
concern as the receiver and beneficiary of a large portion 
of the public taxes, and as the responsible manager of the 
costliest of all the municipal enterprises, the common 
schools. 

One other large matter remains, namely, the appoint- 
ment of the board of examiners for teachers' licenses. It 
may not be feasible in small communities to secure the 
entire service of a business man to attend to the business 
affairs of the schools, — the purchase of supplies and 
books, the erection of buildings, the making of repairs, 
the selection of janitors, — but it is not only feasible but 
also desirable, to secure a separate board of examiners to 
pass upon the merits of applicants for positions as teach- 
ers. This board should hold stated sessions. The all- 
important thing for it to do is to create impartially an 
eligible list of persons who may be legally appointed to 
teaching or supervisory positions. Only by the operations 
of such a board, can the body of teachers be placed upon 
the basis of appointment and promotion for merit.^ 

The first principle relating to this board of examiners is 
that it should be competent. In its constitution, it should 
conform to the principle stated earlier in this chapter, that 
nowhere should laymen interfere with entrance into, or 
with progress in, the profession. Undoubtedly, the board 
of examiners should be appointed by the board of educa- 
tion upon the nomination of the superintendent of schools. 

The second principle is that the board of examiners 
should be separated, as far as possible, from any special 
interest in the local school system. It is a debatable 

1 In Chapter III, " Administration," suggestions are offered as to rules for the government 
of the board of examiners. The discussion here relates only to its constitution. 



THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 71 

question whether even the school superintendent should 
be a member of the board. When the board is smaller 
than five, that he should not be is probably the wise con- 
clusion. A reasonable way to deal with his relation to the 
board of examiners is to make him ex officio secretary of 
the board without a vote. 

The third principle is that all members of the board of 
examiners should receive compensation for rendering a 
professional service. In this respect, this board is collat- 
eral with the body of teachers rather than with the board 
of education. 

These are the ideal principles. They would result in a board of 
examiners constituted as follows ; namely : — 

First : Five in number, one appointed each year to serve five years, 
with the superintendent as secretary during his term of office in the 
superintendency. 

Second : A fee of at least ten dollars to each member for each day 
of each stated session of the board. Of these sessions, there should be 
at least two annually. Necessary traveling expenses should be allowed 
in addition. 

Third: Each member should hold as high a license as that re- 
quired for any license to be issued by the board, or its full equivalent. 
This would result in the appointment of superintendents, supervisors, 
and principals in neighboring communities and of local citizens who as 
retired teachers or as scholarly men or women may possess or be able 
to secure the required license. 

Practically, there may be need to make concessions from these ideals. 
When this is necessary, the term may be reduced to three years and the 
number of members to three, possibly to include the superintendent 
and some principal or supervisor, and the requirements may be reduced 
to college graduation. Such reductions, however, are undesirable. 



CHAPTER III 

ADMINISTRATION 

I. The Affairs of the Board 

A SYSTEM theoretically good often fails for want of effi- 
ciency in its various offices and operations; and a poor 
system sometimes succeeds because of special efficiency in 
administration. A fine engine must have steam ; while 
plenty of steam will drive a poor engine until it wrecks it. 
Whatever be the system, the duty of every board member 
and school supervisor is to drive it for all it is worth, in 
the meantime trying to improve it whenever opportunity 
is offered or can be created. The board chairman or the 
school superintendent whose own work is not good in a 
poor system will do no better when the system is theoreti- 
cally perfect. The man who makes the defects of a sys- 
tem excuses for idleness or carelessness is the man who 
will expect a good system to run itself. The man who com- 
plains and dallies is the man who promises and " loafs." 

The principles that should govern a school administrator 
are not different from those that govern the successful 
man of affairs. Their application, however, is special. 

I. Every board of education ought to hold regular meet- 
ings. This is required by State law in every State of the 
Union. But it frequently happens that, for want of a 
quorum, a regular meeting is not actually held. Business 
transacted at regular meetings is always regarded with 

72 



ADMINISTRATION 73 

greater confidence than business transacted at special 
meetings, unless these are regularly adjourned meetings, 
set for want of time or of adequate data at the regular 
monthly or fortnightly session. 

2. Special meetings, called by the officers of the board, 
or by petition of an agreed number of members, should be 
avoided as much as possible. They should be called only 
when an emergency clearly exists, and the board should 
transact only the business specified in the call. Frequent 
special meetings impress the public in various ways, all of 
which are unfavorable to the school interests. They are 
supposed sometimes to indicate neglect of school affairs at 
regular meetings, sometimes to indicate a desire to avoid 
the usual attendance of the general public, whereby often 
unjust suspicions are aroused, and sometimes to indicate 
undue haste and insufficient consideration of the business 
in hand. Special meetings can be avoided usually by a 
little foresight. In certain seasons, when buildings are 
being erected, the regular meeting, when monthly, ought 
to be held for a time fortnightly ; when fortnightly, it may 
sometimes become necessary to hold it weekly. Or the 
board can and ought to adjourn for a week or for two 
weeks later, thus not only affording ample notice, but per- 
fectly securing due regularity of procedure. 

3. Meetings should begin at the time set. A quorum 
should then be present. As soon as a quorum is present, 
even though the chairman or secretary is absent, or though 
both are absent, the meeting should be duly called by 
officers pro tempore^ and the roll of members present im- 
mediately taken. 

4. Theoretically, the best time for board meetings is at 
four o'clock in the afternoon. This permits an adjourn- 
ment to the evening, when the business has not been 



74 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

transacted by six o'clock, or by whatever hour may have 
been set for the limit of the regular session. Practically, 
in most communities an eight o'clock session is best. In 
communities where the board members are paid salaries, 
ten o'clock a.m. or three o'clock p.m. is a suitable hour. 
Undoubtedly, the practical convenience of a majority of 
the board is, and should be, the governing principle.^ 

5. The best day in the week is usually Tuesday, then 
Wednesday, Monday, Thursday, in that order. 

The principles involved seem to be these ; namely : — 

I. Committees find it difficult upon the day following the Saturday 
half-holiday and Sunday to close up business matters or to prepare 
reports. Monday is usually a very busy day for the school superin- 
tendent, and on that day he finds it difficult to prepare his reports. 

II. Committees desiring to begin work promptly after the passage of 
a board resolution find it difficult to undertake the business Friday or 
Saturday morning, which means that, when possible, the board meeting 
should precede Thursday. 

III. Monday or Friday is a sufficiently good evening to finish up 
committee work before a board meeting ; while Thursday or Friday is 
a good evening to set committee work in motion. 

IV. It is undesirable to have two consecutive evenings set aside for 
committee and board meetings. 

6. A definite and regular order of proceedings should 
be instituted. Change in the order should be made only 
by unanimous consent.^ The more important regular 
business ought to be transacted first, then the less im- 
portant. Next should come the regular committee re- 
ports; next, the special committee reports; next, the 
superintendent's reports ; last, new business. The follow- 
ing order is suggested for a system of a hundred teachers ; 
namely : — 

1 In some States, only the member of the school board who performs the duties of secre- 
tary or clerk can be paid. 

' By rule this change may be made by a two-thirds or four-fifths vote. 



ADMINISTRATION 75 

Suggested Order of Business 

I. Call to order and roll-call. 

II. Reading of minutes of last meeting, their correction and 
approval. 

III. Bills read and acted upon. 

IV. Communications read from other official governing authorities. 

V. Unfinished business. 

VI. Reports of the regular committees in such order as may be deter- 
mined; as, for example: finance, buildings, instruction. Each report 
may be followed by action. 

VII. Reports of special committees in such order as the board chair- 
man may decide, each to be followed immediately by action. 

VIII. Report of the superintendent of schools, followed by such 
action thereon as may be determined. 

IX. New business ; for example : hearing local delegates or com- 
mittees; receiving petitions; hearing complaints, appeals, recom- 
mendations from parents and other citizens ; discussion of future 
policies, needs, demands. 

X. Adjournment upon motion or by order of chairman. ^ 

7. All minutes, corrected and approved, should be care- 
fully transcribed in a permanent journal, and all communi- 
cations filed. Journals and files increase in value with the 
passing years and should be preserved in fire-proof vaults 
or safes. All reports, written and printed, should be filed. 
Bills and receipts, though many years old, are sometimes 
financially valuable or politically important as well as his- 
torically interesting.^ 

8. Every decision of the board, even though apparently 

1 For rules governing parliamentary procedure, see^ppendix IV. 

2 The powers once delegated to a superintendent must not be violated. No member, or 
group of members, of the board has any more right directly to interfere with the superintend- 
ent in the exercise of those powers than has any one who is not a member of the board. 
Only the vote of the board can properly cut off or modify the powers granted to a subordinate. 
The range of executive powers that a board, through its officers, committees, or members, 
proposes to exercise, should be very distinctly defined and never exceeded. Friction, waste 
of energy, bad feeling, delay, and confusion are likely to result when no one is sure whether 
a committee, the secretary, or the superintendent, is responsible for the execution of an order 
of the board. 



76 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

unimportant, should be recorded in a duly written resolu- 
tion passed upon vote of ayes and nays. 

9. Matters should rarely be referred " with power " to 
committees or to the superintendent. 

10. In the absence of adequate State legislation, differ- 
entiating the duties of the board and of the superintendent, 
the municipal board of education should draw up and pass 
resolutions definitely delegating to the superintendent and 
principals such duties and powers as it may see fit. 

11. A board of education should consider as little busi- 
ness as possible in executive session. Whatever business 
is thus considered in executive session, as far as possible, 
should be ratified in open meeting. 

There are three universal exceptions : — 

I. Proposed purchases and prices of real estate should be considered 
first in executive session, to prevent a conspiracy or other agreement 
between sellers to maintain high prices. All contracts to purchase 
should be made in open meetings. 

II. Matters involving morals, whether of teachers or of pupils, should 
be considered and settled in executive session, and the decisions 
reported privately to the persons concerned. 

III. All matters relating to teachers' personal salaries, transfers, 
promotions, services, including parents' complaints, should be consid- 
ered and settled in private or executive session, with or without later 
public report as the board may decide in view of the circumstances. 
Salary schedules may well be fixed in open session. 

12. A limit should be placed upon the amounts of 
money that may be expended by the various committees 
between board meetings without the authority of contracts 
or of resolutions. This amount may wisely be made dif- 
ferent for the several committees. A building committee 
is likely to face emergencies requiring considerably heavier 
expenditures than an instruction committee. The sum for 
emergencies need not be very large, because a board can 



ADMINISTRATION " 77 

always be convened quickly at the time of extraordinary 
emergencies. Within well-determined limits, the commit- 
tees ought to be empowered to draw cash from the treasurer 
of the school fund whenever necessary. Where the law of 
the State does not permit this, a committee ought to have 
power to incur a limited indebtedness. The clerk of a 
board always ought to have power to pay small bills. In 
certain emergencies, promises to see bills approved and 
paid are insufficient to get work done, and there are often 
board members who have no money available for a tem- 
porary loan to the school treasury. In such conditions, 
the officers of the board should be empowered to approve 
bills as a guarantee of the correctness of the expenditure. 
This power in an emergency will sufficiently protect the 
board from the dishonesty of its members. When the 
members of a board have not sufficient credit to secure a 
limited amount of services or goods under such conditions 
as these, surely none of them should be trusted to handle 
cash or to draw warrants not authorized by vote. It is 
doubtless true that bills for services or goods ordered and 
delivered under such provisions as these can be collected 
legally from the board of education. In communities of 
from five thousand to twenty thousand people, from twenty- 
five to a hundred dollars makes a suitable limit for the 
approval of bills in advance of board meetings, the amounts 
varying for the different committees. 

Obviously, no board is compelled to ratify any emergency cash ex- 
penditures or agreements to pay. The school laws of the various 
States amply protect boards of education from the ill-advised or dishon- 
est acts of any board members. No board member and no board com- 
mittee can be made a legal agent for the board.^ 

* The severe limitations of the powers of a board member are carefully set forth in 
Chapter II, " The Board of Education." See page 12. 



y8 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

The acts of the board of education may be reviewed by the courts ; 
and injunctions, temporary and permanent, may be secured against pay- 
ments even upon contract and resolution. Such are the safeguards 
against fraud and folly that are provided by the American legal system, 
which represents wisdom of a higher order than yet controls the practi- 
cal operation of affairs. 

13. " Dispatch is the essence of business." At the 
same time, " The more haste, the less speed." These 
apparently conflicting principles are supplementary when 
rightly interpreted and applied. 

It is " business " to do things, to carry out plans. In 
such business, vigorous action, swift accomplishment, is the 
desideratum. This is the ordinary meaning of being busy.^ 

But it is also " business " to consider plans. Of such 
business, ample thought is the desideratum. Thought, 
broad and deep, requires time. Unless sufficient time is 
taken, errors may be made whose correction requires more 
time than that originally " saved " by the haste. 

No doubt " delayed justice is injustice." Often, it is as well to do 
things wrong as to do them late. Indeed, to do them too late is essen- 
tially not to do them at all. 

A board of education ought to provide that no measures involving 
sums of money above certain limits, no changes in the subjects of a 
course of study, no removals of teachers or of janitors who have had 
permanent appointments, no changes in rules and regulations of the 
school government, or in its own order of business, are to be effected 
upon less than affirmative majority votes in two consecutive regular 
meetings, thirty or more days apart, and after reference to committee. 
Technically, this is called " passing upon reading." 

To illustrate ; November. Resolution : To purchase a site at $2500. 
Moved to refer to building committee. Carried. This is " first read- 
ing." 

* The scholar who reads books is not supposed popularly to be a busy man. School- 
teachers are familiar with the remark, " Since you are only reading, etc." The office man is 
supposed to have " an easy time," or "nothing to do," because often he is not visibly at 
work. To " work " is supposed to be making, changing, or shifting about real things. 



ADMINISTRATION 79 

December. Report of committee : To purchase at $2500. Moved 
to adopt. Carried. This is " second reading." Under " rules," final 
*' reading" laid over thirty days. 

January. Under "unfinished business " or "calendar": Moved to 
empower officers of the board to execute contract to purchase (or to 
take title) at $2500 (or some amount less). Carried. This is "third 
reading " and completes legislation. 

The rule as to readings should not permit increasing proposed appro- 
priations during the time that a measure is in course of passage.^ 

14. An individual board member should never predict 
what the action of the board will be upon a given matter, 
or pledge his own vote for or against a proposition. No 
exception lies even where the board member believes that 
the action will be unanimous. Unquestionably, a board 
member has a right, even a duty, to state the policy of the 
board to inquiring and interested citizens, though he is un- 
der no legal obligation to do so. Unquestionably, a board 
member is within his rights in explaining a past action of 
the board (though it is not always best to do so), and even 
though to do so is to betray confidences and unnecessarily 
to wound others. He is also within his rights when he 
explains the grounds of his own vote. 

To predict action is as unfair as to promise a vote, for it 
tends to bind one's associates. It is also unwise, for in 
the event of failure to realize the prophecy, the prophet 
is discredited. 

To illustrate each of these situations : — 

I. A board member gave his opinion that the board would undoubt- 
edly vote to purchase at a certain price a lot upon which stood a house 
rented to a tenant. The lease of this tenant was about to expire. The 
tenant heard the prediction and moved out. It was then argued at 
the board meeting, in favor of the purchase of the lot, that as a matter 

1 For more technical account of " readings " consult Appendix IV, Parliamentary Rules. 
The subject of executive dispatch is again considered in this same chapter, under the 
heading, "II. The Affairs of the Superintendent." 



8o ■ ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

of politics, since the owner was a man of influence who had suffered a 
loss, the board must make the purchase. This was injecting a false 
interest, private and partisan, into a strictly public matter. 

II. A board member promised his vote to a candidate for a janitor- 
ship. The committee on buildings submitted the name of another man 
and supported the nomination with facts that conclusively demonstrated 
his superiority to all other candidates. This particular board member, 
however, to keep his promise, voted for the other candidate, ignoring 
both the reasons advanced for the nominee, and also the careful con- 
sideration given the matter by his fellow-members. The unfairness of 
this was so obvious that it lost their support later for his own recom- 
mendations. 

To pledge one's vote is to promise not to think, not to listen to 
other members, and not to do at the time whatever seems wise. When 
board members are given to making such pledges, a condition of fac- 
tionalism and distrust necessarily follows that is injurious to the best 
interests of the schools. 

The pledge of a vote by an individual board member is undemocratic 
because the essence of democracy is association and conference be- 
tween free men. The purpose of the meeting of a board is not merely 
to register votes, but to determine wisely all matters in issue. A great 
deal of the politics in American education arises from the fact that the 
board members and the school men consider friendships and alliances 
first, and public interests second. Democracy constantly tends to purify 
itself of these politicians (who are usually not corrupt) by turning them 
out of office ; but others equally misguided are very apt to secure elec- 
tions. 

The statement of the board's policy by a board member 
is a public duty. To know what that policy is, belongs 
of right to every interested citizen. Moreover, it is the 
duty of every citizen to interest himself in this vital mat- 
ter. This is equally true whether the policy is general, as 
a policy of progress or a policy of reaction, or is specific, 
as a policy to develop a system of manual training or to 
increase the salaries of the teaching positions. But when 
the policy is itself in doubt, it is unfair to state anything else 
than the fact of doubt and the possibilities of the decision. 



ADMINISTRATION 8 1 

Explanations of the grounds of a board's action and of 
one's own vote belong to a different category. Every 
board member is a delegate, and as such is responsible to 
his constituents. Equally, he is an elected delegate, and 
as such is responsible to those citizens who voted for him. 
When he sees fit to do so, by his legal obligations, he is 
clearly justified in explaining past acts of the board and of 
himself. The wisdom of doing so, unless by order of the 
courts, is often very doubtful. The unfairness of it is 
often obvious. 

To illustrate : It seemed necessary to discharge a certain janitor, for 
cause. The man had political friends who desired to know the cause. 
A certain board member decided to give the information, "confiden- 
tially." Results : The janitor could get no other satisfactory regular 
employment. His own friends then combined and secured the defeat 
of the only board member who " sympathized " with him. And when 
the next janitor offended and ought to have been discharged similarly, 
a majority of the board were afraid to vote to dismiss him. Such was 
the demoralization that resulted from an unfair and unwise disclosure 
of truth. 

15. In all purchases of real estate, equipment, and 
apparatus, the interests of the future ought to be con- 
sidered rather than the interests of the present. Undoubt- 
edly, it requires greater care to discover and to determine 
the real interests of the future than those of the present. 
Similarly, the community's larger interests ought to be 
consulted rather than the narrower interests of the schools. 
The applications of this principle are many and diverse. 
To enforce this principle in a community's affairs is to 
make the community progressive by giving room and 
space for the energies of its people. Illustrations in the 
concrete abound, and may be seen in every village, town, 
and city of the land. 



82 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

I. A board of education was offered an option of 20,000 square 
feet of land upon a corner at the price of I4000, or the same plot to- 
gether with side and back lots to the extent of 50,000 square feet for 
$8000. The first plot meant space for a twenty-room schoolhouse, 
the second meant a park and playgrounds for the school. The board, 
under pressure from the municipal council, purchased the small plot. 
Within a few years, the side-lots had been built upon by house own- 
ers, and it became advisable to increase the size of the schoolhouse. 
Unfortunately, the lower walls of the building had not been built strong 
enough to sustain another story, which, however, was built. Results ; 
Cracked walls appeared, and the schoolhouse had to be partly torn 
down. There now stands close upon the street a high school building, 
crowded with children without open-air playgrounds. 

II. In that same city, a few years later, there was a demand for a six- 
room building where a two-room building already stood upon a narrow 
lot. Various plans were presented. By two years of thought and 
political work, the board was finally able to accomplish these things ; 
namely : The purchase of a two-acre plot and the sale of the small 
lot and the erection of a twelve-room building with architectural 
provision for its easy and cheap extension. The schoolhouse now 
stands in a park of young trees with lawn and school gardens. The 
recent houses built in the neighborhood are better than the old. The 
property is the pride of the city. There is land enough, and to spare, 
for a fifty- or an eighty-room building, in the century to come. Men 
have no higher duty than to consult the welfare of later generations. 

III. A certain town decided to build a new high school building. 
It appeared that the average number of graduates of its grammar 
schools was fifty annually, that the average increase in attendance 
was ten per cent, and that the average number in the school was one 
hundred and forty. By these figures, it was estimated that the total 
number of high school students would not exceed two hundred for ten 
years to come. The superintendent of schools advanced his opinion 
that a new and larger building would result at once in larger entering 
classes, and in the longer continuance of the pupils at school. The 
chairman of the building committee urged that provision should be 
made for the needs of twenty-five years to come. The board, however, 
voted to erect the building upon the scale of two hundred students. 
The building was a model of its kind, with a gymnasium and a library, 
as well as an assembly room and a set of laboratories. Results : The 



ADMINISTRATION 83 

building was filled upon the day it was opened. Within two years, 
half-day classes were established. Within five years gymnasium, 
library, assembly room, and laboratories had all been changed into 
class rooms with desks. The "model" high school had become a 
miserable, overcrowded makeshift. 

The principle of giving larger consideration to the interests of the 
future than to those of the present is equally applicable to the smaller 
affairs of supplies, text-books, and repairs. An unsatisfactory text-book 
once adopted, unless offensively poor, may be used for many years before 
it is possible to change it for a better. 

16. In treating school district indebtedness, a board of 
education owes it to the people of the future (who are to 
pay the debt) to provide easily but regularly for its pay- 
ment. 

When it becomes necessary to build a new schoolhouse, there are 
three courses that may be pursued. One is to levy the cost in the taxes 
for a year or two. This course has certain advantages. It avoids in- 
terest charges. It compels a board to be sure that the taxpayer will 
" stand for it." There are but few communities in which the taxpayers 
and their clients are not in the majority. But this course has disad- 
vantages also. It causes irregular tax levies, a policy that disconcerts 
taxpayers. It tends to cause the seasons when new buildings are going 
up to be seasons of severe economies in all current expenses. It tends 
also to severe economy financially in the construction of the buildings 
themselves. Undoubtedly, it is a great advantage not to be paying old 
debts ; but, in a sense, it is an ethical advantage that the buildings are 
paid for largely by those who in early years received instruction in 
them. 

A second course is to bond for a term of years with or without a 
sinking fund. By this course, a building is paid for ten, fifteen, or 
twenty years after its construction, unless the debt is then refunded 
and continued. Meantime, until it is paid for, the building is, in a 
sense, hired from the bondholders, in consideration of the payment of 
the interest upon the bonds. To bond without a sinking fiind or any 
other provision for payment has certain advantages. It keeps taxes 
down. A $50,000 building secured for five per cent bonds costs 
$2500 a year to hire, and correspondingly less when secured for four per 



84 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

cent bonds. This is cheaper than hiring equal space in private proper- 
ties. Low taxes often give a community an opportunity to grow in 
wealth so that when the bonds are due it is much easier then to provide 
for their payment than it would have been at the time the debt was 
made. The disadvantages are numerous and familiar. To bond for 
$30,000 at four per cent for fifteen years, means to pay $48,000 in all 
for the $30,000. The community may not thrive. The generation 
then in control may feel the burden of payment very severely. The 
course tends to extravagance and to irresponsibility, even to corruption. 
To bond with a sinking fund, increases the burden of the current 
expenses. There are various methods of operating sinking funds. 
The purpose is always to accumulate sufficient money to pay off rather 
than to refund the bonds at their maturity. The fund, by its own 
annual increase, slowly " sinks " the bonds. One method may be illus- 
trated as follows ; namely : — 

Fifteen-year bonds for $30,000 

Annual tax for sinking fund $1,600 

Purchase each year these or other four per cent bonds (paying pre- 
miums when necessary) . 

Total purchase from tax-money . . . . . $24,000 
Interest accumulations compounded .... $6,000 

Total fund at end of period $30,000 

There are certain disadvantages in operating a sinking fund. It is 
often difficult to purchase bonds at a fair price. It adds considerably 
to the work of the treasurer of the school funds. It adds greatly to his 
responsibility. It has sometimes happened that part of the fund has 
been lost through unwise investments. The advantages are that a 
$30,000 building actually costs the taxpayers, not $48,000, but that 
amount less the $6000 of interest accumulated, that is, $42,000. 

A third course is to bond, providing for the payment of the bonds in 
equal distribution through a period of years. By this course, only a 
few bonds run beyond ten or fifteen years. 
To illustrate this method : — 

Four per cent bonds, limit 15 years, for . . . . $30,000 

Pay two bonds each year $1,000 cash 

Or pay no bonds for five years, and then pay three bonds each year. 

This method accomplishes the same purpose as the sinking fund. 
Its great advantages are its simplicity and its avoidance of increased 



ADMINISTRATION 85 

responsibility and labor for the treasurer. Its chief disadvantage is 
that bonds for a short term of years, and in small amounts, do not com- 
mand as high premiums as larger amounts for longer terms. 
To illustrate : — 

Thirty $1000, 20-year four per cent bonds, sell for . . .1 .04 
Thirty $1000, i to 20-year four per cent, sell (average) . .1.015 
Difference in premiums $750 

On a good market, the difference in premiums for four per cent 
bonds of equal security, but unequal terms, often amounts to several 
per cent, making upon large bond issues a difference of thousands 
of dollars. 

A variation of the " third course " in bonding is to have certain of the 
bonds issued fall due in a certain number of years, certain others in 
another certain number of years, which is equivalent to issuing, say ten 
lo-year bonds, five 12-year bonds, fifteen 15-year bonds. Where all 
bonds are issued by the city council, it may happen that such a distribu- 
tion, owing to other bonds or expenses that can be foreseen, will keep 
the total tax rate more nearly uniform than would the redemption of an 
equal number of bonds every year. 

In this matter of bonds, " circumstances alter cases " 
decidedly. But in general these are safe principles; 
namely : — • 

I. Serious increases in tax levies should be avoided. 

II. Bonds should not run over fifteen or at most twenty 
years.^ 

III. Some bonds should be paid every year directly; 
or a sinking fund should be established and carefully 
administered. 

17. There remains to be considered the peculiar situation 
of boards of education in cities where free text-books^ are 
supplied to all pupils, in reference to the question whether 

1 Because 30-year bonds sell at higher premiums than shorter term bonds, recent legisla- 
tion favors them. It seems unfair, however, to obligate the property of people of so remote 
a time. 

2 The advantages and disadvantages of the free text-book system are discussed in Chapter 
VI, " The State System." 



86 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

there shall be an " open " or a " uniform list." By an "open 
list " is meant that principals have options between vari- 
ous books in each subject. By a " uniform list " is meant 
that all schools use the same text-book in each subject. 

The advantages of the " open list " are : — 

1 . Some texts fit the needs of certain kinds of children better than 
others. This is an important requirement in communities whose dis- 
tricts differ widely in the original races and nationalities of the people. 

2. Some text-books fit the methods preferred by certain principals 
and teachers, while others do not and are therefore disliked. 

3. An opportunity is given for experiments. In different schools, 
different books may be tried. The fittest books tend to survive. 

The advantages of the "uniform list " are : — 

. I. That since pupils of all schools study the same books, transfers 
may easily be made without danger of " losing a grade." ^ 

2. Throughout the system, all teachers are tried by the same stand- 
ards. The failures cannot be charged to differences in books. 

3. There will be fewer experiments. No books will be placed upon 
the list until thoroughly examined. Consequently, there will be less 
money wasted upon poor books. 

4. It is a great advantage to supervisors in theijr direction of the 
course of study, to follow one method. 

5. One text-book in each subject, with perhaps two supplementary 
books for the teachers, gives a definite character to the work of every 
teacher and to the education of the entire community. 

6. It is much easier to transfer teachers from one school to another. 

In general, small, homogeneous communities do not need 
the "open list." Larger communities, with a heterogene- 
ous population, may need a reasonably " open list," that is, 
a choice of perhaps two texts in each subject. Large 
cities ought to list, for supplementary use, a considerable 
number of the best books in each subject 

The main point is to have plenty of good reading matter 
available, both regular and supplementary. The best 

1 This is one of the arguments used by the advocates of " State adoptions." The argu- 
ment becomes a reductio ad absurdum when applied to the whole nation. 



ADMINISTRATION 87 

school systems spend the most money for books and sup- 
plies. The higher the grade of a class, the more costly 
the outfit necessary for good progress.^ 

18. Whatever are the nature and the organization of the 
governing board of the schools, and whether it be inde- 
pendent of the municipal council or not, it is always true 
that in a democracy every board of education ought to 
publish full and transparent reports regarding its financial 
affairs and its policies. The board of education that ex- 
pects to secure funds for new buildings or for increased 
school expenditures owes it to the people to explain why 
it makes its requests. This does not mean that it should 
make such a report only when in immediate need of the 
money. On the contrary, a report is most needed a 
reasonable time before the demand arises for immediate 
action. The mind of the public ought to be prepared 
adequately beforehand. 

I do not mean that the management of the school affairs should be 
based upon the comparative costs of other schools. A community is 
often justified in having heavier expenditures than prevail elsewhere. 
Unless some schools are better equipped than others, a competition 
may set in for the cheapest possible schools instead of for the best, to 
the ruin of American free public education. But such matters as the 
regularity of the growth of attendance or of an especially accelerated 
growth of attendance, and the increased demand of the public for 
higher or broader education, ought to be brought before the people by 
the board at such frequent intervals as to make public ignorance no plea 
for refusal to grant requests. From this, it is obvious that the financial 
skill of the board of education must not be less than that demanded in 
the premises. When the board of education has no members who 
possess this knowledge of finance, such a knowledge ought to be 
acquired and manifested by the superintendent of schools. For lack 
of knowledge of general municipal finance, the public and the town 
or city council have often unjustly distrusted the board. 

^ The matter of distribution of text-books is referred to upon page loi. Se« also 
Appendix V. 



8S ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Particularly should the financial managers of boards of education 
understand the principles that determine whether proposed changes in 
expenditures are extravagant or really economical. This will often 
depend upon the relation of the local school income to that which may 
be derived from State funds.^ 

19. Every board ought to understand the nice distinc- 
tion between economy and parsimony. 

An increased expenditure may be economical because it gives an 
improved curriculum or an improved physical condition to the schools 
at a cost that is justified by the very great gain. Parsimony consists in 
cutting expenditures to the point of injuring the schools to a degree 
beyond that justified by the extent of the reduction. ^ 

The school systems vary greatly in the relative propor- 
tions of money spent for a thousand children upon salaries, 
text-books and supplies, and investments in buildings. 
These matters depend relatively upon the local condi- 
tions ; but, as a general principle, it may be said that the 
tendency in America is to build fine school buildings and 
to employ cheap teachers. For the sake of expressing an 
opinion that may be used as a standard of criticism, I sug- 
gest the following as rational minimum financial standards 
per thousand children in small communities. 

1. For buildings and lands .... 1^150,000^ 

2. For the pay-roll for teachers and janitors . 1^50,000* 

^ To illustrate : It may be that the installation of manual training, despite its apparently 
large cost, is really economical because the State may supply most or all of the funds, and 
because such instruction may do away with other instruction hitherto paid for out of the local 
funds. 

2 To illustrate: In a local school there may be a principal at $1500. A so-called econo- 
mist may advocate the discharge of the principal or the installation of another principal at 
$800. The result of this may be almost to ruin the discipline, and therefore the instruction, 
of the school. This is not economy but ruinous parsimony, and ought to be so branded by 
every loyal educator and board of education member. To illustrate again: $150 a year is a 
low tuition charge for private schools. Yet the poorer children of the public schools need, 
and the nation needs for them, really better instruction than that given well-to-do children in 
private schools. Anything less than the $65 recommended here is parsimony. 

3 Such a number of children ought to have school grounds of at least two acres in extent, 
and four are better. ^ See Chapter XVI. 



ADMINISTRATION 89 

3. For the expense account for all supplies, including 
text-books and fuel ;^ 10,000 

4. For the incidental account, including repairs, insur- 
ance, etc $S,ooo 

II. The Affairs of the Superintendent 

In the present actual relation, probably in the ideal rela- 
tion, of the board of education to the superintendent, the 
head of the schools, as administrator, is primarily and 
essentially a servant of the board.^ This is not true of 
the superintendent as supervisor.^ 

I. The first principle of administration in any office is 
to deal with matters in the order of their relative impor- 
tance. This requires insight and judgment. It involves 
also understanding of the personalities concerned. It may 
be taken as " evidence of proof " that a man who can hold 
the same office through a series of years, or who can go 
from one office to another and another of equal or greater 
importance, has both insight and judgment. When he 
can stay in the same community and secure successive in- 
creases of salary through a term of years, it is almost cer- 
tain that he understands the relative importance of affairs. 

To illustrate the principle: Monday morning with a heavy mail. 
There is no office secretary. Superintendent due to attend special 
exercises at a distant school at eleven o'clock. Unexpectedly the chair- 
man of the board arrives for a consultation. A distinguished school 
superintendent from another community is due at one o'clock. 

The other superintendent will help make or mar the local reputation 
as well as the general. 

The exercises are public. 

1 In this latter relation, he is consulting and advising attorney. In supervision, he is an 
educator and ought to have independent powers. 

2 See Chapter V, " The Superintendent." The general purpose of this chapter is to set 
forth principles. See Chapters I and II. 



90 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

The board chairman is an important officer. 

The mail is important. 

The superintendent is new to the position. 

If the superintendent excuses himself to open his mail and to dis- 
pose of it, the chairman may think that he is systematic ; also, the 
chairman may think that he does not care much for board officers. 
The superintendent must not fail to be on hand at the exercises, for the 
parents are invited to hear and to meet him. He cannot return to 
his office for mail while the visitor is on hand. 

To grip and to hold the chairman may mean success : new and bet- 
ter schoolhouses, new and better teachers, new and better everything, 
and reelection. 

A man with the gift of an administrator will welcome the board 
chairman, calmly stow all the apparently important mail in his pocket, 
and sit down to consult the board chairman until the last minute before 
the time for leaving for the school exercises. When that time arrives, 
and not until then, he will invite the chairman to go with him. If the 
member cannot go, he will make an early engagement with him, as early 
as possible without breaking the appointment of the visiting superin- 
tendent. He will read his mail when he can, on the theory that matters 
of really imperative importance are very seldom transacted by mail. 

2. The second principle is memory. A competent ad- 
ministrator remembers what he has ordered, what he has 
planned, what his engagements are, who his subordinates 
are, even the candidates for positions. He remembers 
also all politicians, all present and all former board mem- 
bers on sight ; their opinions and actions. He is interested 
in personalities. 

To forget persons or duties upon only a few occasions is often to 
ruin all prospects of permanent success. Subordinates distrust a man 
who does not remember their remarks to him. Every superintendent 
must understand that the three-minute talk of a subordinate with him 
may be an important event to the subordinate influencing the course 
of his life. The superintendent's memory of all board resolutions and 
discussions, and of all school laws ought to be perfect. Lapses in 
memory tend to contradictions in orders ; and such contradictions 
promote confusion. 



ADMINISTRATION 91 

3. The third principle is dispatch. 

A certain very successful school superintendent made it a rule of his 
life never to go to his office when not perfectly able to transact busi- 
ness correctly and at top speed. He was really something of an invalid. 
His rule sometimes kept him out of his office almost entirely for days 
at a time. Upon such days, he " sauntered " about the schools and 
made it a rule to say very little. He soon won the reputation of "wast- 
ing no time" and of "making no mistakes." Yet upon days when he 
felt well, he found time for long conferences with teachers and parents 
and politicians. He handled mail with extreme rapidity, and gave 
orders and opinions immediately. Only those who knew the facts 
intimately knew that he suffered from ill health. 

The secret of dispatch is not to debate and to discuss 
when there is nothing at issue, but to take up the business 
at hand and to decide promptly where there is anything 
at issue. The successful administrator never beats back 
upon his own trail. What is done, is done. The past 
may afford light, but it cannot offer leading. Debate is 
academic; decision, practical. 

No doubt injustice is sometimes done, no doubt a mis- 
take is occasionally made. But the man who by caution 
wins battles, by the very delay often loses the campaign. 

4. The fourth principle is courtesy, graciousness, desire 
to be kind and to do kindness. 

This charity, %a/ot9, is not love alone, but also the 
appearance of it. The successful administrator in any 
office must be supremely kind, must be conscious of kin- 
ship with all other men. Beware of the apparently success- 
ful administrator who counsels otherwise. He is not likely 
long to remain a school superintendent. 

This graciousness is a quality that reveals itself often despite uncouth 
manners and an ugly face. It is useless to try to assume it when deal- 
ing with those whom one sees frequently. " I liked him the first time," 
said a certain teacher, " but the second time I saw through him, and 
now I hate to meet him." Such is the saving power of intuition. 



92 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Poverty of communities alone accounts for the survival of ungra- 
cious superintendents. This supreme quality of grace has very little 
to do with morals. Because of very pride in their righteousness, some 
good men lack brotherly kindness. 

5. The fifth principle of successful administration is 
foresight. To lay railroad tracks into the future is a chief 
concern of the successful administrator. His plans run 
far ahead. And beyond his plans, run his estimates of 
future facts and needs. 

To illustrate : A new board member decided to arrive at a knowl- 
edge of what that " useless supernumerary," the school superintendent, 
really had to do, and spent a day with that officer. When the day was 
over, among other things he said, " You live in the future." This was 
true. 

A school superintendent must estimate the future growth 
of attendance in the schools, the necessary increase in the 
number of teachers, the decline of attendance in certain 
districts through change in nature of population, the need 
of new schools, codifications in courses of study, and the 
prospects of change in board members.^ 

6. The sixth principle of good administration is to be 
systematic and methodical. To be systematic is to have 
organized plans and to be regular in carrying them out. 
The poetic genius whose nights and days go by in ecstasies 
and spasms does not long succeed and survive in any ad- 
ministrative office. To be methodical is to develop ways 
and means for carrying plans forward to realization. 

System and method are not to be judged by external signs only. 
To illustrate : A certain school superintendent reads all his earliest 
morning's mail carefully and answers within a day all of it that deserves 

* Those who object to the interest of educators in the complexion of their boards, fail to 
observe the principle, " Put yourself in his place." That interest ought to be solely for the 
educational welfare of the community, and not in the least for the personal welfare of the 
superintendent. 



ADMINISTRATION 93 

answer. AH the rest of the mail is allowed to accumulate to be sifted 
over when opportunity offers. Papers and school reports are allowed 
to accumulate also. At certain times, one might suppose that everything 
was in the height of disorder ; but there never is real disorder. Every 
week his secretary clears up everything, filing what is important, and 
throwing away the rest. 

The city school superintendent who in the present age attempts 
personally to read all of his mail, to see all of his visitors, and to 
transact all of the business that comes to his office, without a secretary 
or with one, will never find time to visit schools and to hold teachers' 
meetings. A good administrative system involves neglect of the less 
important in order to deal thoroughly with the more important. 

7. The seventh principle of successful administration is 
courage, the courage of the strong heart, the definite will, 
the clear and wise head. Courage is half of every battle, 
and fortitude the rest. It is well to be courageous even in 
the unessential so as to keep in training for the time when 
courage is demanded for success in things essential.^ 

To illustrate : A school superintendent was urged by his instruction 
committee to choose between two candidates for a certain position. 
Not feeling assured which was the better, he threw the choice back 
upon the laymen, who misunderstood his indecision of mind for 
cowardice of heart. He was never afterward asked to make a choice. 
He had thereby abnegated the first right of the superintendency, the 
right to select those by whose results he himself was certain to be 
judged. He refused to make the choice because he feared his own 
judgment. Such a man cannot be a superintendent in reality. The 
courageous do not long remain clerks ; the timid can be nothing else. 

It is a misfortune that the tendency of the narrow, traditional, free 
common education is to make school superintendents of men who are 
inclined to let others decide for them. Their judgments are not only 
poor, but are also timidly advanced. No stronger argument can be 
adduced for a broad, progressive education than that it trains the judg- 
ment and quickens the self-reliance of the students. 

1 See James, " Psychology," chapter upon " Habit and Will." Therein is presented a fine 
argument. 



94 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

8. In the present condition of American free common 
education, the next principle of a sound business adminis- 
tration by a superintendent — namely, to trust subordi- 
nates wisely but sufficiently — is very difficult to carry 
out. 

Every school superintendent who has over twenty-five or thirty 
teachers needs at least one secretary, who may or may not be a stenog- 
rapher and a bookkeeper. To this secretary or office clerk may be 
assigned these duties ; namely : — 

I. To be in the office when the superintendent is out of it, so as to 
be able to answer the questions of visitors and telephone calls, and to 
tell where the superintendent may be found. ^ 

II. To open the mail and to record and file bills and other docu- 
ments of value, some of which should go immediately to the clerk of the 
board of education. 

III. To write by dictation most of the correspondence, thus saving 
the more valuable time of the superintendent so that he may supervise 
the schools by actual visitation. The letters can be written when the 
superintendent is out of the office and can be looked over and signed 
upon his return. 

IV. To manifold examination and test papers, rules and regulations, 
notices of meetings, and general directions. 

V. To serve as messenger upon various errands. 

VI. To verify the contents of packages of books and supplies, and 
to approve or disapprove bills, upon reference of any discrepancies to 
the superintendent.^ 

Similarly, the school superintendent should turn the conduct of 
details over to the principals and supervisors. 

Many otherwise good superintendents fail in this respect. "We can- 
not do two things well at once," and " One nail drives out another," 

1 No public school system can be brought up to the modern standard unless all of the 
schools are connected by telephone lines with the office of the superintendent. A telephone 
for immediate conferences between supervisors and principals is more important than a type- 
writer for correspondence, and saves much time and many mistakes. Often prompt infor- 
mation permits, even insures, prompt action, the value of which may be very great. 

2 This duty belongs in the largest cities to the special department of the board of education, 
and in cities of medium size to the office of the clerk of the board of education. But in the 
smaller school systems it comes more or less within the administrative province of the school 
superintendent. 



ADMINISTRATION 95 

are maxims that every administrator ought to observe by giving details 
to others. 

9. It is a sound principle of good school administration 
to mean to neglect nothing. Undoubtedly, the best ad- 
ministrators do neglect much ; but this is only for want of 
time, not from carelessness. The very details that are 
turned over to others must be kept within the vision ; and 
to them attention must occasionally be given to see that 
the subordinate does not neglect them. It may indeed be 
said that the most successful administrators are those who 
least neglect details. However, it will invariably be found 
that such administrators employ very competent subordi- 
nates. 

The special weakness to-day is not in the class rooms, 
but in the offices of the principals, supervisors, and super- 
intendents. Promoted as most of them are after long 
service in the ranks, most supervising officers care too 
much about details. On the other hand, some supervisors 
fail for want of sufficient knowledge of details. One of 
the reprehensible practices of economical boards is to 
make young college graduates without experience princi- 
pals of schools. 

A good school superintendent keeps himself in touch 
with every part of his work. The day that some teacher 
says, " The superintendent seems to know nothing about 
my work in Grade II arithmetic or physical training," that 
day the superintendent may arrive and discuss the matter 
with knowledge at least adequate to satisfy the require- 
ments of the teacher. 

10. The next principle of a good school administrator 
is "to be no respecter of persons." He is indeed a re- 
specter of board members because they hold governmental 
power, not because they are rich or influential as private 



96 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

citizens. He is a respecter of parents because he is the 
shepherd of all their children. But a good school super- 
intendent proceeds impartially in the conduct of all his 
public business. He retains no poor teachers, however 
near they may be to himself as friends, however strong 
they may be in the politics of a ward or of a church. He 
makes war for his schools to get all their enemies out of 
positions in which they can do the schools harm, knowing 
that to injure the schools is to reduce society to lower 
levels. He consults truth and justice, not expediency. He 
uses expediency as a means to effect the ends of truth and 
justice, but never considers untruth or dishonesty expedi-- 
ent for any cause. 

He is neither cruel nor unwisely kind. From pity, he is not misled 
into injustice to the school children and youth intrusted to his care. 
The poor girl who is " only a high school graduate " but wishes to 
teach so as to help her widowed mother, the girl who is indeed often 
with us, touches his human sympathy. He is ready to help her to go 
to normal school or to college ; but he will not help her to the harm of 
others. The man who has failed as a lawyer or minister or mechanical 
engineer and who is now anxious to teach, finds the presumption of the 
superintendent against him rather than for him. The youth just out of 
college, who desires to teach for a year or two, so as to save some 
money for a start in a law school, does not interest the school superin- 
tendent sufficiently to permit him to make of a high school position a 
" stepping-stone to higher things," ^ unless it be to the higher things 
within the profession of teaching, such as postgraduate courses, or 
better positions. To the competent and faithful school superintendent 
there is nothing higher than education, though at the present time there 

1 This was not always so. The Egyptian priesthood which ruled so many millenniums until 
the warrior Syrians invaded and conquered the land, was a teaching profession. Herbert 
Spencer is quite wrong in assigning to the clergy as priests the origin of all the professions. 
That origin was in the clergy as teachers. From teaching, all professions have been differen- 
tiated since man became man. From teaching, renewed day by day, all professions are now 
created. This age, too, will pass ; and teaching will return to its own as the mother, the 
foster-mother, of all the arts and sciences, the nurse of all wisdom. Jesus was a teacher. 
Every great leader of men has been essentially a teacher. 



ADMINISTRATION 97 

are several other professions that "pay" better than teaching. The 
school superintendent forwards no man's interest, no woman's cause. 
He has never any other end in view than the good of the pupils in his 
schools and the welfare of humanity. He constantly searches his mind 
and his soul that nothing else enter in. Otherwise, a school superin- 
tendent betrays a sacred trust. 

II. A competent administrator administers wisely his 
own time. Probably he decides that he must visit at least 
one school each day, must conduct so many teachers' 
meetings each month, must have such and such office 
hours, must prepare such and such reports, must do so 
much studying that the reservoir will have at least as 
much inlet as outlet, must set aside such and such times 
for teachers to consult him freely, must give a certain 
amount of time to calls upon board members, and must 
attend to the mail and go to the office with regularity. 

By way of suggestion some such program as this is mapped out : — 

Regular Weekly Routine 

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday : Office from 8 to 10 a.m. 
Tuesday and Thursday : Visit schools from 9 a.m. to 12 M. 
Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday : Office from 3 to 4 p.m. 
Friday : Office hours reserved for teachers, from 3 to 5 p.m. 
Wednesday : From 12 m. throughout day, remain at home for study. 
Tuesday and Thursday evenings : Committee meetings. Calls on 
business upon board members and other officials. 

Regular Monthly Routine 

One Thursday each month visit schools of other municipalities. 

Two Tuesdays each month at 4 p.m., principals' meetings. 

Two Tuesdays for other regular meetings with teachers. 

All grade meetings and all faculty meetings will avoid Tuesday so 
that the superintendent may at his option and convenience come to 
such meetings. 



98 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

One afternoon and evening, at least, set aside fof preparation and 
attendance at the regular monthly meeting of the board of education.^ 

In addition, the superintendent provides for his mail, unless absent 
from the city. He provides also for the systematic preparation of 
bulletins for teachers, consultation with supervisors, and review of 
reports sent to parents. 

Such, in mere outline, is a tentative suggestion of routine duties. 
In addition, the competent administrator keeps clearly in mind his 
duties that are not routine. Among these are committee meetings, 
more or less irregular, reports to special and regular committees, sta- 
tistics and statements and correspondence for the public press, investi- 
gation and consideration of parents' complaints, pupils' truancies and 
other misdemeanors, enforcement of compulsory education laws, changes 
in State laws, teachers' licenses, appointments, transfers, promotions, 
discharges, changes in text-books, modifications of courses of study, 
evening free school and free public lecture affairs, entrance require- 
ments for college, the meetings of teachers' associations of county, 
State, and nation, and in special cases, advising pupils on their affairs of 
business or of further study when about to leave school. 

Besides this public work, there is a great deal of optional work that 
is professional yet partly private as well as public, such as writing papers 
for educational associations,^ and articles for educational publications. 

12. The last principle of sound administration includes 
punctuality, promptness, and reliability. To meet appoint- 
ments, to do things on time or ahead of time, to do what 
is requested or expected : this is character. Fortunately, 
in this respect most school administrators excel, as they do 
in system and method. 

1 An actual experience in the schools of six different States, viz. Ohio, Massachusetts, 
Pehnsylvania, Nebraska, New York, and New Jersey, and an acquaintance with men in 
nearly every State in the Union, unite in constraining me to say plainly to all persons who 
think of undertaking to become school superintendents, that the work is quantitatively 
heavy. No man can succeed in it who cannot work easily and comfortably twelve of the 
fourteen hours from 8 a.m. to lo p.m. and keep a measure of health while so doing two hun- 
dred days in the year, and put in from five to eight hours' daily work one hundred days more. 
This is the minimum time required for the distinctly public work of any successful superin- 
tendent known to me in any community with forty or more teachers. 

2 The general public is in error in supposing that such papers are of pecuniary profit. 
Very few speakers or writers upon educational topics receive any compensation therefor. 
It is customary to repay traveling expenses. 



ADMINISTRATION 99 

Every one of these principles is essential to a great 
success in school administration.^ 

In the course of a lifetime of service even the successful 
superintendent meets with an occasional serious reverse.^ 
Upon such occasions most men in the superintendency go 
down never to reappear as heads of school systems. The 
ablest men in the profession do not tell much about their 
defeats, but the principles of their action and conduct at 
such times may be seen. The strong man can do more for 
school progress with a bare majority facing a hostile mi- 
nority than with a unanimous board. Very likely he has 
made enemies (not to say opponents) because of his very 
strength. In the man who is successfully riding out the 
storm may be seen coolness, composure, self-reliance, and an 
apparent frankness that hides a real reticence. He, not the 
weaker man who at such a time would resign, is the one who 
in the reaction to come can do most for the schools. That 
will be a fortunate day for American education when to 
resign in the face of defeat will be taken as an admission 
of error, not as an assertion of superior merit, as it is now 
frequently supposed to be. The educator, like the lawyer 
and the doctor, should go to a community meaning to find 
his life work there. It is the men of long tenures who are 
doing the great construction work in the superintendency.^ 

III. The Affairs of the Principal 

The duties of the principal and the plan of the adminis- 
tration of a school growing out of those duties are created 

* For their application to supervisors and principals, see Chapters VI and VII. 

2 One superintendent once said to another, " I never asked my board for anything that I 
did not get." To this the other replied more shrewdly than politely, for he knew the facts, 
" And what did you ever ask for ? " 

' This must not be taken too broadly. It is sometimes best for the man himself to make a 
change and sometimes best for the community. But the principle stated in the text is the 
right standard of action. 



L.ofC. 



100 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

and governed by the relations sustained by the principal. 
As a general fact in American communities, principals of 
schools have been longer in the particular office than the 
superintendent. In short, the superintendent inherits most 
of the principals together with most of the teachers. From 
this fact, friction not infrequently results, and can be 
remedied only where the superintendent is a man of 
distinctly higher ability and broader scholarship with a 
stronger personality than the principals. 

The relations of the principal are with the superin- 
tendent, the supervisors, the board of education, the 
parents, the children, and lastly, with the community 
generally.^ 

The first administrative feature of the position of the 
principal is that he is conspicuously before the public as 
the educator. He holds a permanent position and is 
brought into daily and constant contact with parents. 
His first object, therefore, should be to sustain harmonious 
relations between the school and the home, that is, be- 
tween the teachers and the parents and the children. To 
this object he should give his primary attention. Conse- 
quently, he should regard the calls of parents at the school, 
and of himself and his teachers at the home, as matters of 
paramount importance. So long as the American public 
school is public, that is, open to all visitors, this publicity 
is for the principal its chief feature. Nothing in a school 
system causes more trouble than for a principal to be dis- 
agreeable or tactless in dealings with the parents who send 
children to school and with the children themselves. 

The first principle in dealing with these adults is to give 
them adequate time to state the cause of their visit when 
the cause is to present a complaint. In a sense, the 

1 In the chapter upon " The Principalship " these relations are fully discussed. 



ADMINISTRATION lOI 

principal is judge, jury, and executioner, in such cases, for 
few parents are inclined to appeal to the superintendent or 
to the board of education. A full hearing and an impartial 
decision are, therefore, requisite. 

The next matter that should concern the principal in his 
dealings with parents is to try to bring them to as favor- 
able an opinion of the school as possible. It may, indeed, 
be said that a school is popular or not, in the degree in 
which the principal of that school is popular. This popu- 
larity does not by any means involve the surrender of the 
fundamental principles of education. On the contrary, it 
depends almost entirely upon the display by the principal 
of a knowledge of the foundation elements. Besides ap- 
pearing to be what he ought to be, an educator, the princi- 
pal should be very courteous in all dealings, thoroughly 
polite, not merely by disposition but also in manner. 

The third relation of the principal, in the order of its 
importance, is his, or her, relation to the teachers. This 
should be manifestly a relation of help rather than of 
criticism ; that is, the purpose of the criticism should be 
help. The average American teacher in school systems 
with principals is a young woman who needs help. Some- 
times she does not know this fact, but generally she is all 
too conscious of it, and therefore very sensitive. On the 
other hand, the average principal is a person of mature 
years and therefore enabled by experience to give help. 

The fourth relation of the principal is to the board of 
education. This relation must be taken as official rather 
than personal. It is to the body of men charged by law 
with oversight of the principal's duties regarding the man- 
agement of the school. 

To illustrate : In town and city school systems where there is a free 
text-book list, the principal is the person on whom must fall most of the 



I02 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

duties with regard to recommending, securing, and distributing the 
text-books, the stationery, and the other supplies. 

In the performance of the duties growing out of these 
relations, the principal should be prompt, methodical, and 
explicit. In the office of the superintendent and of the 
clerk of the board of education, those principals secure 
good reputations whose work is done with regularity. 
They are known as rehable men and women. 

Promptness is almost equally important. The principal 
who executes an order immediately upon receiving it is the 
one who is known as efficient. 

To illustrate : In a school system with five, or twenty-five, or fifty 
principals, there are always some who are laggards. When a board of 
education issues a resolution, there are always some who cannot find 
time to carry out its requirements until a week or two has passed after 
all the others have accomplished its directions. Such principals are not 
the ones for whom the board of education is enthusiastic in making an 
effort to raise salaries, to strengthen tenure, or to secure pensions when 
disabled. 

Fifth : In these business affairs, the principal who makes 
the fullest and the clearest reports is the one who renders 
in that respect the most satisfactory service. There are 
always some principals in every school system whose work 
is better in this respect than the superintendent or the 
board of education expect. 

To illustrate : In a certain school system, the board of education 
desired to get information regarding the ages of all the school children. 
One principal made an extremely valuable report by dividing all the chil- 
dren up into sexes, nationalities, and grades, and by showing as a result 
that the male children of certain nationalities averaged younger in grade 
than any other children, while the female children of another nationality 
supplied the greatest proportion of those whose progress was retarded. 
Further analysis of this same report showed that all the girls of this 
nationality were doing heavy domestic work at home and were therefore 
too tired to do their school work well. 



ADMINISTRATION I03 

On the whole, the main quality required of principals for 
the proper and successful performance of their duties is 
that composite quality commonly known as thoroughness. 
It must be remembered that the principal is the key of the 
educational system, and fortunate is that school system 
in which, in every school, there is a competent principal 
without the additional obligations of a regular full day 
class teacher. 

Occasionally, a very serious question as to the powers of the board 
and of the superintendent or principal may arise. Legally, in most 
States all the real power is in the board. Customarily, much of the 
power is really exercised by the superintendent and principal. To 
illustrate : A high school principal refused to obey the resolution of the 
board to grant a diploma to a certain pupil, who was forced to take the 
document unsigned by the educator. He contended (and public opin- 
ion supported him) that whatever the law might be, the signatures of 
the officers of the board were effective merely as certifying to the author- 
ity of the principal in the high school. Again : In the absence of any 
resolution and between board meetings, the superintendent in an emer- 
gency, to protect a principal, suspended two insubordinate teachers and 
transferred three who were disloyal. At the following board meeting, 
factions developed, and by a narrow majority his order was revoked and 
he himself censured ; to all of which he replied, " I have no legal author- 
ity to do anything, but to-morrow I shall exceed my authority as usual." 
It is certainly an anomalous position to be required to produce results 
and yet to have absolutely no legal powers. Here, as everywhere, the 
safe principle is to obey public opinion, which is stronger than any board 
that undertakes to oppose the dictates of sound common sense. 



CHAPTER IV 

SUPERVISION 

There are several differences between a very poor 
school system and a very good one. I state them not in 
the order of their importance but in their historical order 
of causation. In their order of importance, by far the 
greatest of the differences is in the teaching, that is, in the 
quality of the teachers. Yet no city can transform itself 
immediately from a poor educational condition to a good 
one by revolutionizing its teaching body. It cannot do 
this because it never knows how to do it, and it is never 
willing to do it. Further, if a city with a hundred poor 
teachers, worth, say, two hundred and fifty dollars a year 
each, should suddenly decide to get a teaching force worth 
eight hundred dollars a year as an average per teacher, 
it would not know how to get such teachers. Who would 
select them } Who is to select a competent superintendent 
who, in turn, will select competent subordinates ? 

The historical order in which good schools are secured 
is a zigzag, like all progress, and is as follows ; namely : — 

Money (more of it and more wisely expended) . 
Supervision (more and better). 
Money (more, etc.). 
Administration (better). 
Teaching (better, and more of it). 
Money (more, etc.). 

Course of study (broadened and improved). 
Money (more, etc.). 
Text-books (more and better) . 
104 



SUPERVISION 105 

Money (more, etc.)* 

Buildings (better). 

Money (more, etc.). 

Equipment (more, and better) . 

Money (more, etc.) . 

Then repeat. 

Continue to repeat to the end of time. 

The initial movement, more money, and a desire for 
better conduct of the schools, must come from the people. 
Unless there is a substantial and a spontaneous effort by 
the community to get better schools, there can be found no 
way for any individuals, whether private citizens or public 
officeholders, to secure for the community better schools. 

The history of progress is frequently this : — 

The people become conscious of the fact that they want 
better schools, and they propose to get a better school 
superintendent. To this end, they select a new board of 
education. After two or three years, the board becomes 
an anti-present-incumbent board and discharges the in- 
cumbent. It then tries to find a better school superintend- 
ent. Meanwhile, the people begin to talk about " spending 
more money for the schools, if necessary." This is said 
very quietly, but it is meant strongly. When the board 
has been wise enough to recognize among the candidates 
the man who is really better than the former superintend- 
ent, progress begins. The people back the progressive 
man.^ 

In the good superintendent, skill in supervision is more 
important than ability in administration.^ One is art, the 
other is power. Supervision is professional; administra- 
tion is universal. Supervision is an educational matter, 

* The power of the superintendent who has the support of the parents is invincible. See 
Chapter V, " The Superintendent." 

2 The subject of administration is dealt with in Chapter III, " Administration." 



I06 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

a specialty; administration is business management, an 
executive quality. Supervision is an acquirement; ad- 
ministration is largely a native quality. More superintend- 
ents, supervisors, and principals fail in their administrative 
than in their supervisory duties. A greater percentage 
of men fail in business than in any of the professions. It 
is not true that the ability to administer well cannot be 
acquired, but must be native ; yet it is true that it is ex- 
tremely difficult to acquire. The matter of supervision 
is scarcely as much a matter of ability as of knowledge 
used wisely and skillfully. There are many men ** born " 
to administer affairs, there are none ** born " to supervise 
schools.^ 

Before discussing supervision as such, it is necessary to 
dispose of prejudices, to the effect that supervising officers, 
whether superintendents, principals, or supervisors, are 
higher than teachers. They are not necessarily higher 
in character, ability, energy, or scholarship, though they 
usually receive more money. In the present economic 
regime, we talk of " compensation," weighing out money, 
that is, material things, over against spiritual ideas. It is 
well for educators, who always are the dispensers of cul- 
ture, and who often are and always ought to be the leaders 
of thought, to consider carefully this matter of the rela- 
tions of supervisors and class instructors. 

No doubt our nation is, in a sense, recapitulating the 
histories of most other nations. In a sense, our democracy 

1 We are seeing in this age many conspicuous instances in the second and third gener- 
ations of the rich that go to prove the difficulty, yet the practical certainty, of the possi- 
bility of learning how to administer great properties. " From shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in 
three generations " is no longer true. To avoid it, train the sons (and daughters) to busi- 
ness, year after year, until they acquire the ability to manage property. To make a good 
city superintendent, use good general native ability, a thorough general education, some 
special training, a few years in the class room, a few years more in the principalship, and 
half a dozen in a small superintendency. Thus, nine times out of ten, at thirty-five or 
forty years of age, the successful superintendent is made. 



SUPERVISION 107 

may even now be in process of transformation into a feudal 
State by reason of its economic social relations. Unques- 
tionably, some of our business leaders are iiow working to 
that end. But the fancy of others that we are to become, 
not an industrial feudal State, but a communistic State, has 
quite as many facts for its support. Trades unionism, 
if successful, can result only in giving all workers equal 
livings, and in making the State ^ the owner of all wealth- 
producing property. 

This matter concerns educators personally and also as 
the builders of the nation. A very important reason why 
competent superintendents cannot accomplish more in their 
management of schools is because of the proper dislike of 
authority felt by all teachers. In these pages, I have 
necessarily used the words " superior " and ** subordinate." 
There is no other way to express the relations of superin- 
tendent, principal, and class teacher. But it is only in a 
certain respect that the principal is subordinate to the 
superintendent and superior to the class teacher. This 
respect is administrative and supervisory, not necessarily 
intellectual and moral, as will appear upon consideration. 

The consciences of our forefathers, upon their awaken- 
ing to the great democratic ideas of liberty, equality before 
the law, and opportunity for all, knew that public intelli- 
gence is essential to the preservation of free institutions. 
Whatever is done by reason of instinct or of conscience is 
likely to be done without full knowledge of the real needs 
to be met and of the ways to meet them. When democ- 
racy decreed the free school for all children, it failed at 
first to discern that the school must be not only free 
but compulsory, not for children only, but for youth also. 
Democracy saw at first only the teacher in the class room 

1 1 use the word here in its meaning in political science, covering all forms of government. 



I08 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

with the children, and long failed to see the teacher in 
course of preparation, the teacher being assisted to reach 
all children, the teacher being wisely selected and set to 
giving instruction in the most important matters. 

Here supervision enters in, creating the normal school, 
securing State legislation for compulsory education, select- 
ing the teacher, and arranging the course of study. Here 
supervision defines its own function : ** I am the inter- 
mediary between the schools and democracy. I see and 
tell the truth about the education of individuals. I per- 
suade society to seek its largest good." 

The forces of capitaHsm may be tending to make a 
society that will illustrate a social geometry of the vertical 
plane, — an aristocracy above, in the middle the classes, 
and the masses beneath. People are already talking of the 
grades, high and low, of individuals, of families, of occu- 
pations and professions. We people of the schools are 
ourselves talking after this fashion, disputing whether 
teacher, instructor, educator, educationist, supervisor, or 
superintendent be the term highest in dignity, discussing 
whether principal or supervisor be entitled by rank to 
higher "pay." 

On the other side of modern society, the forces of labor 
are warring to make a society of the horizontal plane. 
** All men are created equal," says the great Declaration. 
Therefore, let all men in all respects be equal, taking 
orders from none, giving orders to none, deciding every- 
thing by majority vote. Some of us in the schools are 
engaged in this war (it may be unwisely), urging the crea- 
tion of councils of teachers to supplement superintendents 
and principals, trying to make these officers, who are only 
now escaping from being clerks of the boards of educa- 
tion, in part at least, clerks for the teachers. 



SUPERVISION 109 

This warfare of the vertical and horizontal planes, of 
feudalism and of communism, is renewing and improving 
our democracy. It generates a social geometry of the 
sphere, which has neither top nor bottom ; which has, in- 
deed, no levels. No one can turn this democratic social 
universe upside down because we are all inside of it. We 
do not know where the center of it is ; we cannot locate 
its axis of rotation. All that we do know, or can know, is 
that the groups of the various communities, of the various 
social institutions, of the various vocations and avocations, 
form, as it were, separate solar systems, different vortices 
within the stellar spaces. 

In this social universe, the teacher of the class room is 
nearer the home and the parent than is the teacher in the 
office, but is not so near to the government and the politi- 
cians. No one knows which is higher in rank and dignity, 
or which serves his day and generation more and better. 
We know that, in the economic vertical plane, the super- 
intendent has the larger income of material goods. This 
is so, however, not because he is higher as a teacher, but 
solely because he is supposed to have administrative ability, 
which, being highly valued in the world of business, is not 
abundant in the educational market.^ 

It may be answered that the ability to teach is equally rare. This 
may be true, but the superintendent is supposed to have both the ability 
to teach and the ability to administer afFairs. He is a school system 
manager, that is, supervisor, teacher, and administrator, all combined 
harmoniously. 

As administrators and supervisors, the superintend- 
ent and the principal are set in authority over the 
teachers. As teachers, however, their relation with the 
class teachers has no trace of authority. It is this feature 

1 See Chapter XVI, '' Salary, Tenure, and Certificate." 



no ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

of the superintendency that has confused many communi- 
ties and indeed whole States. 

To illustrate : In a certain city the school superintendent, who desired 
to give some information regarding a candidate for a teaching position, 
was ordered out of the board with these words, " Go back to the schools 
where you belong." Similarly, at a certain public meeting in another 
community, a school superintendent who had become very influential in 
all public affairs, was angrily addressed by a fellow-citizen as follows : 
" Get out of here. Teachers have no business to try to boss us. You 
stay with your children." In each case, the superintendent was evi- 
dently regarded simply as the equal of all other teachers ; he was not 
looked upon as supervisor and administrator. There are only a few 
American communities in which many citizens do not suppose, " of 
course," that the superintendent goes to school when the children do 
and goes home when they do, and has all the school holidays and vaca- 
tions for recreation. In the degree in which a teacher is solely an 
instructor and in which a principal or a superintendent is solely an 
inspector of classes, in that degree he is at school only when the chil- 
dren are. 

It is an educational tendency in these times to exalt the 
supervisory duties of the superintendency and of the prin- 
cipalship and to debase the administrative. This is a 
healthful reaction from the conditions of the period when 
superintendents and principals spent their days in their 
offices, making examination papers and writing reports. 
The office superintendent is not directly superintending 
classes, but administering affairs. He is issuing orders, 
not getting direct information, and in person making direct 
suggestions and giving direct help. The tendency now 
is to praise the man who lives with the children because, 
by logical inference, he loves them. This is the superin- 
tendent who is a magnified teacher, and therefore easily 
comprehended by most laymen, who, being themselves 
mechanics and clerks, cannot comprehend the functions of 



SUPERVISION III 

administrators, and who, in their childhood days, saw- 
teachers often and the superintendent only when he visited 
their class rooms as a supervisor. 

The hope of good schools in America lies in preserving 
the two diverse qualities, the supervisory and the adminis- 
trative, the professional and the business, in the one super- 
intendent. Yet it should be said, " If a small city must 
choose, let it take a man who is a good supervisor first," 
for administrative ability is of less importance. Only men 
of genius are equally good as supervisors and as adminis- 
trators. Rather let the board of control in the city that 
needs a new school superintendent decide which qualities 
it needs more, the administrative or the supervisory. 

To be explicit : The superintendent who is stronger as an adminis- 
trator than as a supervisor will present new results more quickly even 
in the strictly educational matters, — the course of study, the improve- 
ment of the teaching force, the changes in text-books, — and will im- 
prove the discipline, morale, and esprit de corps more positively. He 
will concern himself about new buildings, sanitation, repairs, school 
appropriations, teachers' salaries, political relations, and similar half- 
professional, half-business matters. He will effect the revolution 
speedily. But it may not be quite the revolution desired. 

He is the sort of man to be taken (when no genius appears) by com- 
munities in these conditions ; namely : — 

I. The community with very poor schools that has suddenly aroused 
itself and desires immediate reform. 

II. The community with many schools and an extended course. 

III. The community that has great and peculiar difficulties, such 
as partisanship upon the board, very low appropriations, poor school 
attendance with many truancies, factory employment of children under 
the school age limit, religious controversies in the community, schools 
under extremely diverse conditions, local schools without competent 
supervising principals,^ poor school accommodations. 

IV. The community that desires immediate advertisement as having 
exceptionally good schools. 

1 See Chapter VI, " The Principalship." 



112 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

The man who is stronger as an administrator than as a 
supervisor is the man for such communities. What com- 
munities ought to select the man who is stronger as a 
supervisor than as an administrator will appear after a 
careful consideration of what supervision, philosophically- 
reviewed, really is, and what in its practical applications 
it ought to be. 

1. Supervision is overseeing. It is standing upon the 
height and looking across to the horizon. It is taking a 
broad view, the general view, and seeing the back and 
middle grounds as well as the foreground with its details. 
It is knowing that the school is within the community, and 
observing its area and limitations. It is comprehending 
that free common education is but one great form of the 
activities of the nation, the form that prepares for all other 
worthy activities, and that wars against all unworthy activi- 
ties. Good supervision is never petty, but always generous 
in aim, in extent, and in nature. 

2. Supervision is " overlooking " in a humorous sense. 
The good supervisor is always charitable. He is able to 
neglect details in the interest of the whole. A mere detail 
has no right to be made into a "stone of stumbling" and 
"a rock of offense." The good supervisor thinks very 
often of the thirteenth chapter of a great teacher's letter 
to his coworkers at Corinth. For good supervision " suffer- 
eth long and is kind, is not puffed up, is not easily pro- 
voked, thinketh no evil, endureth all things, never faileth." 
It is far better to tolerate small deficiencies than to make a 
great enemy. 

This principle is especially applicable to those well- 
regulated school systems in which at the end of the second 
year of successful teaching or successful service as prin- 
cipal or supervisor, the incumbent receives a permanent 



SUPERVISION 113 

appointment. There and everywhere a good supervisor 
realizes that far more can be accomplished by encouraging 
the good and suggesting the better, than by denouncing 
the bad, the weak, and the foolish.^ Sometimes he must 
remove error, but he always does it in such a kind manner 
and with such sincere frankness that no possible dislike 
can follow with cause. 

3. Supervision is insight. It is keen vision that looks 
into the heart of men, women, children, and affairs, and 
sees truth. Good supervision aims at truthfulness. The 
good supervisor never blinks at facts, never swallows state- 
ments whole, lest he be fed upon fictions. Good super- 
vision is systematic and scientific observation of realities. 
It utiHzes parents* complaints, teachers' meetings, rumors, 
as the clews to investigations. A good supervisor is often 
silent about the facts he knows. Truthfulness is not neces- 
sarily truth-telHng, truth-emptying-ness. Truthfulness is 
knowing the truth, and sincerely utilizing that knowledge. 
A good supervisor is hungry for facts by which to inform 
himself correctly and adequately, rather than to expose to 
the world the errors and deficiencies of colleagues, who, what- 
ever their deficiencies, are generally as earnest as himself. 

4. Supervision is vision in the old and beautiful sense 
of seeing things invisible. "And their old men shall 
dream dreams and their young men shall see visions." 
Blessed is the community in whose schools are old men 
and women, who as teachers still dream dreams of earthly 
paradises, and young men and women who have learned 
to see visions of golden heavens. " The new heaven and 
the new earth " come only for those and by those whose 
spiritual life is quick and strong. 

The good supervisor, knowing the real, works for the 

1 See Chapter XVI, " Salary, Tenure, and Certificate." 



114 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

ideal. Neither he nor his teachers nor his community will 
ever see the ideal education ; but unless he has visions of 
it there will be no progress^ where he labors, however hard 
he may labor. Without this vision, the superintendent 
has no power with either his board or his community. 
That was a great saying of America's greatest seer, — 
Of what use is your speech " when what you are thunders 
in my ears }"^ One's ideals are largely inferred from 
his acts. 

5. And supervision is foresight. The good supervisor 
sees ahead, near ahead and far ahead. He plans ahead, 
gives instruction ahead, takes the people of the community 
into his confidence ahead of his need of their help. The 
value of this preparation of the mind and heart of indi- 
viduals and of the community is incalculable. The value 
appears in two results. There is much opposition that is 
offered to new measures simply because they are new.^ 
No one opposes them after they have become familiar with 
the thought. 

A striking illustration was the experience of a certain superintendent 
regarding manual training, for which, against many opponents, he had 
prepared the mind of his community through a considerable period of 
years. Finally, a course in manual training was adopted with practically 
no opposition. The few vigorous opponents found no support. The 
great majority of the people considered that all the arguments were in 
long since, and their opinions were final. 

One prominent citizen remarked at a public meeting, — " It has come 
to stay." Another said, — "We have seen our own children's work, 
and it is all right." A third declared, — "There's no use in fighting 
over dead issues. We voted on that before." 

A frequent illustration is in the experience of those who, having 
thrown out the suggestion of a plan, as it were casually, find it presented 
as the original suggestion of some man of strong influence. The tactful 

» See Chapter XII, " The New Education." 2 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

' See Chapter XIII, " The Educational Policy of the Community." 



SUPERVISION 115 

superintendent desires no credit. He rejoices in a convert and an 
apostle, and helps the good work forward as an humble assistant. 

Such is supervision. To it philosophy contributes 
breadth of mind; religion, graciousness of heart and 
manner ; psychology, knowledge of human nature ; science, 
systematic truth-seeking ; ethics, truthfulness ; pure litera- 
ture, visions of ideals ; and political science, the record of 
human experience that becomes the wisdom of foresight. 
We indeed read too much of pedagogy and study too 
much the subject-matter of our curriculums, when we 
read so much that we never have time to read economics, 
sociology, literature, religion, science, and poetry, and to 
hear the best music and to study the best art. 

Supervision is primarily not authority, but ministry. 
The good supervisor comes to his colleagues to give help, 
knowing so much and being so glad to impart his knowl- 
edge ^ that help follows in due course. 

Supervision has certain objects. The first of these is to 
convey facts about the schools and about education to the 
representatives of the people upon the board of education. 
The superintendent is an intermediary, the official and 
responsible intermediary, between the schools and the 
board. He ought to be so careful, so explicit, so complete 
about all facts that he reports or ought to report, as to 
cause the board to quote him rather than to send investiga- 
tors or to go themselves to the schools for the facts. He 
must neither exaggerate nor seriously understate the facts. 
His estimates, therefore, should be made with exceeding 
care. 

To illustrate : In a certain city, a controversy began to rage regard- 
ing the attendance and the need of more school accommodations. The 
superintendent gathered his facts with care, and made estimates of the 

1 See also Chapter XIV, " Education for Supervision." 



Il6 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

effect, upon attendance, of building several new schools. An investiga- 
tion committee was appointed. By visits to every class room, they 
found that the superintendent had understated the facts by one and a 
half per cent. One new school was ordered. When it was opened, 
the attendance was twenty-five per cent larger than his estimate. 
Thereafter through a long term of years the superintendent's statistics 
and estimates were never challenged. His community was soon relieved 
of all pressure upon school accommodations by ample provision for 
the attendance. 

To illustrate the impolicy as well as the unrighteousness of understat- 
ing needs : In a certain community, where the superintendent's tenure 
was insecure, he persistently contradicted public accusations of over- 
crowding and refused to present complaints. The board, consisting 
largely of taxpayers, for years denied the facts and refused to investi- 
gate. Suddenly the superintendent's resignation was demanded ; and 
within a year new buildings were going up in various parts of the city. 
The discharged superintendent, upon seeking a recommendation for 
employment elsewhere, was ungratefully refused any indorsement by his 
former main supporters on the ground that he had withheld the facts. 

Sometimes, the school superintendent and other super- 
vising officers do well to disregard the board of education 
and to present the facts directly to the people, in the public 
press or in public meetings. This is a hard doctrine, often 
bitterly resented by board members ; but the righteousness 
of it appears in a consideration of the facts. For the suc- 
cess of the free common schools the general public chooses 
to hold the teachers ^ responsible exactly as in the cases of 
endowed schools and of private schools. In the entire 
history of education, recent and remote, in the New World 
and in the Old, no board member, no trustee, has ever won 
educational fame, however long and valuable may have 
been that service, or whether given to university or to 
common schools. The public has always known that 
education is never life's main concern to the board mem- 

1 Unless otherwise defined, the word " teacher " indicates all persons professionally con- 
nected with the schools from kindergartners to superintendent. 



SUPERVISION 117 

ber. The public sees board members come and go. A 
board of education is a running stream. The public sees 
many teachers remain teachers, often in one community, 
all their lives. The drift into and out of the profession is 
confined largely to rural districts and to small communi- 
ties. In the cities once a teacher is to be always a teacher. 
The percentage of change among city board members is 
many times that of the teachers. 

Whatever may be the legal powers of boards of educa- 
tion, and however great they may be, these powers are 
vested in the board, not in the board members. The public, 
which is not expert in the laws, chooses to fasten the re- 
sponsibility upon those persons who daily and visibly exer- 
cise authority. Upon us who teach, especially upon those 
who supervise teaching, upon us individually and as the 
representatives of a profession in our community, rests 
the obligation of good schools. Whenever and wherever 
the body of teachers in village, city, or State, work daily, in 
school and out of school, for good schools, they get them. 
In the degree of their intelligence, desire, and effort they 
get them as far as public and private resources permit. 
They get well-lighted and well-ventilated buildings, manual 
training and domestic science courses, school extension, 
lecture courses, and salaries higher than most other 
teachers. 

The present condition of American schools reflects the 
average demand of the teachers themselves. Those of us 
who try to charge the responsibility for poor schools upon 
ignorant or niggardly board members, political city coun- 
cils, an apathetic public, indifferent parents, grudging tax- 
payers, have completely missed the point at which the 
educational profession aims. This end is the protection, 
by the teachers, of the interests of the children and the 



Il8 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

youth, in the midst of those collisions of self-interest which 
we call the " world." 

There were teachers centuries and ages before there 
were boards of education. There will be teachers long 
after the present political scheme of supporting free com- 
mon education by taxation of private wealth has ceased to 
be a necessity. The teacher is never the creation of any 
board of education. On the contrary, every board of edu- 
cation is merely a political and legal device for main- 
taining the teachers. 

No teacher, whether of the alphabet or of physics, 
whether in the class room or in the superintendent's office, 
should feel that he owes his teaching position in human 
society to any set of men, not even to his board of educa- 
tion. He owes his teaching position to himself and to 
the teachers who taught him, to his fellow-men who need 
teachers for themselves and for their sons and daughters, 
and to man, the race whose destiny is of many millen- 
niums. He may owe his office and his salary to a par- 
ticular board, even to a majority of the members of that 
board. As far as the recollection of this fact interferes 
with his courageous performance of his duty, he ought 
to put it out of his mind. 

Obviously, many times in the proper performance of his 
educational duties, a superintendent must go directly to 
the people with facts for their consideration. The people 
will listen to them and will go to the board members. 
This appeal to the public conscience is good for the com- 
munity, good for the board of education, and good for the 
teachers and the schools. In a democracy, the people 
have the right to know both what they are paying for, and 
what they ought to pay for. " The truth shall make you 
free," is a truth for the schools. 



SUPERVISION 119 

The ability of the superintendent is tested severely in his 
selection of what to tell the people, and how to tell it, and 
when. But his policy with the board of education ought 
invariably to be that of keeping every member fully in- 
formed. To the board should go out reports at any time. 
A weekly letter of condensed news is sometimes not too 
frequent. 

The second object of supervision is to bring the people 
into helpful and sympathetic relations with the schools. It 
is the supervisor's business to get public appreciation of 
the work of the teachers, who are themselves completely 
absorbed in their daily duties. The means to be employed 
to secure this public appreciation are various. No duty of 
the supervisor is more important than this, and none is so 
frequently neglected. 

The values of public appreciation of the teacher's faith- 
ful daily work are several. The first is that the teacher 
who feels that her work is appreciated by the board of con- 
trol, the parents, the citizens, and the supervisors, does 
better work, and does it more cheerfully. To know that 
the public thinks well of its servant is an inspiration. 
That the lot of most teachers is hard is generally well 
known, but that the chief factor in its hardness is the 
apathy of the community, for which the work is done, is 
not so generally well known. 

No doubt there are two points of view from which the 
teacher's lot is commonly regarded : that of the compara- 
tively poor and ignorant, to whom the few hundred dollars 
received annually by most teachers seems a great sum 
for one person who works only two hundred days in the 
year and only five hours in the day ; and that of the suc- 
cessful business and professional men whose monthly in- 
comes exceed the annual incomes of teachers. Yet even 



120 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

the poor and ignorant man sees in the teacher's daily task 
much hardship in the constant control of forty or fifty 
children. Often he says, "It's hard enough to manage 
four or five children at home." To him the discipline diffi- 
culty appeals strongly. The hardness of the teacher's lot 
is seen by the successful well-to-do man in its material re- 
wards, which are usually the occupancy of a single room 
in not too fine a house, the ordinary meals in cheap board- 
ing houses, clothes not better than those of the most plainly 
dressed women of the famihes of people of very moderate 
means, and very restricted vacations.^ 

The hardest feature of the lot of the class teacher, who 
at thirty or forty years is still working with children daily, 
is that her time is spent upon those who cannot see and 
appreciate her services, who are certain to forget her, and 
who often misrepresent her best endeavors. To live with 
and among children is not a normal state of life for 
adults. Undeniably, it tends to cramp the mind and to 
dull the spirits. This, more than anything else, tends 
to remove persons of energy, character, and intelligence 
from the profession, or to sour their best qualities. The 
very experiences of life, the growing old, the losing, by 
removal to other places or by death, of relatives and 
friends, — all tend to widen the space in thought and aspi- 
ration between the children and the teacher. There is but 
one remedy. For this the good supervisor provides a 
constant acquaintance by social meetings with the adult 
citizens who are interested in the schools. 

A second value of the public appreciation of the teacher 
is that the children and youth in the schools then do better 
work. The feeling for " the public eye " is not confined 
to adults. When the children and the youth know that 

1 See Chapter XVI, " Salary, Tenure, and Certificate." 



SUPERVISION 121 

their parents and acquaintances are concerned for the 
welfare of the schools, they make an effort to do well so 
as to appear well. In fact, the chief value of the visitor's 
appearance in the class room is in arousing the pupils. 
It makes no great difference whether the visitor be man 
or woman, superintendent or board member, the person is 
a new adult, and the children's natural and common feel- 
ing of isolation with their teacher from the moving affairs 
of the real world disappears for a time in the glowing con- 
sciousness of being discovered, and of being sufficiently im- 
portant to warrant the expenditure of the time of an adult.^ 
The immediate effects of the visit soon disappear, but the 
consciousness that another visitor may come, at almost 
any time, does not disappear at all from* the school of 
which the public does show its appreciation by occasional 
visits. 

Further, this public appreciation manifests itself also 
in home inquiries and in the inquiries of friends regarding 
the school's affairs and the children's own records. In 
almost every respect this is very desirable. No doubt, 
occasionally, where the relations between the school and 
the home are sympathetic, the parents make unreasonable 
requests, which otherwise they would not think or dare to 
make. But also in such relations the teacher sometimes 
makes strange requests. Yet, on the whole, the relations 
of intimacy are vastly better. The children are more 
easily controlled. Home work, if given at all, is better 
done, as well as more reasonably assigned. The monthly 
report card loses an importance that it never should have, 
that of being the sole medium of communication between 
the teacher and parent. 

1 See Chapter XI, " The Teacher as Administrator and Supervisor," where the various 
limitations of schools by parents and citizens are discussed. 



122 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

The third object of supervision is to "help the teacher." 
This object, though the most talked of, is the least impor- 
tant. Further, it is the only one that appeals immediately 
to business men on boards of education. Where the 
supervisory force is inadequate, there, in order to secure 
its extension, an argument is needed. The most effective 
argument is that the teachers need help and guidance in 
their work. The standards of the competent supervisor 
are uniform and high, and his knowledge and his experi- 
ence are greater than those of the class teacher. There- 
fore, he not only holds the teachers to their best work, but 
gives them assistance in doing it. 

A striking instance of the value of this argument is the following : 
In a certain city, in each of the school buildings there had been placed 
recently a supervising principal, that is, a principal without a class. 
This apparently added an expense of about $1000 a year to each 
school, with an apparent maximum salary of $1500 for the "extra" 
teacher. A heavy taxpayer, in indignation, called upon the superin- 
tendent of schools and protested against the " useless extravagance." 
When the superintendent replied that the teachers needed the help 
of a principal, not only in the subject-matter of the studies and the 
class-room discipline, but also in the discussions with the parents that 
otherwise interrupted recitations, the obdurate taxpayer replies, " You 
ought to get such good teachers that they would not need to be helped 
at any time from one year's end to the other." The superintendent 
then went on to show that a good teacher with good supervisory assist- 
ance could teach fifty children better than she could teach thirty 
without such assistance. He showed that $100 per class room appar- 
ently " added " to the expense of the schools was more than offset by 
the release of the teachers' power.^ This argument was successful. 

The matter of supervision for the assistance of the 
teacher has now developed so far in some communities 
as to be an actual menace to good schools. Work is 
planned in such detail as to make the teacher's own men- 

1 See Chapter XI, " The Teacher as Administrator and Supervisor," where the real 
economy of placing a supervising principal in every schoolhouse is discussed. Also page i8o. 



SUPERVISION 123 

tal activity impossible. As no stream is likely to rise 
higher than its source, the task-bound mind of the teacher 
is not likely to develop the free intelligence of the child. 

The " helping the teacher " that is most heard of and 
most thought of consists in visiting the class room and in 
changing some method or device of instruction or discipline. 
In order to promote the success of young teachers, this is 
often absolutely necessary. Whenever it is done, it should 
be so done as not to arouse in the minds of the children a 
suspicion that the teacher is not so " good " a teacher as the 
supervisor. The value of good supervision may be seen by 
a comparison of a school system with supervisors and a 
school system without supervisors, and by supposing either 
to be transformed into the other. Among the changes 
would be the following : In the school system that should 
lose its supervisors, all parents who wished to see any 
teachers would go immediately to the class rooms rather 
than to the principal's office, thus interrupting recitations. 
All records formerly kept by the principal would be kept 
severally and disconnectedly by the teachers. There would 
be no person responsible for the physical care of text- 
books and supplies. The teachers would have no repre- 
sentative to urge their claims and offer their excuses in 
various matters. There would be no central authority for 
the selection of text-books and apparatus. Every teacher 
would necessarily attend to the discipline of his or her own 
class room, or else send a disorderly pupil to the officers 
of the board of education. Teachers needing advice and 
counsel would have no one of larger experience to whom 
of right to go. The promotions of individuals and of 
classes would have no standard examinations and tests. 
Finally, the board of control would necessarily deal with 
the teachers as individuals, and not as an organized body. 



124 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Such a change would inevitably be a change for the 
worse, and could be justified only by a sudden financial 
calamity befalling the entire community. 

The opposite change need not be portrayed at any 
length. The installation of a competent supervisory force 
in a town or city, and the extension of a supervisory force, 
are both processes familiar in recent educational history. 
Such a change is always considered progress. Yet the 
progress is attended with the danger of reducing the teacher 
to an unthinking machine. 

The legitimate forms of competent school supervision 
may be classified under two heads : relieving the teacher, 
and organizing the schools efficiently. 

Under the head of supervision as a mode of relieving the teachers, 
may be included the following : — 

I. Taking charge of all serious cases of discipline. 

II. Receiving all calls of parents during school hours. 

III. Preparing, or completing, many of the reports. 

IV. Advising and counseling with the teachers regarding advance 
lessons and reviews. 

But the work of organizing the schools, so that they may be consistent, 
harmonious, and efficient, is an equally important form of competent 
school supervision. This includes the following : — 

I. Developing, in considerable detail, the work of each grade year 
by year, and month by month, and discussing the work with the 
teachers. 

II. Establishing uniform standards of promotion, so that pupils may 
be transferred from one school to another upon equal terms. 

III. Taking charge of school assembly and general exercises. 

IV. Arranging and holding parents' meetings in the school buildings. 

V. Organizing school exhibits of regular work in all lines of study. 

VI. Advising with the board of examiners regarding the qualifica- 
tions of candidates for licenses, and selecting the best candidates, 
whether local or not, for positions vacant. 

VII. Filling the teacher's place when absent from illness or other 
cause, or securing a well-prepared and competent substitute. 



SUPERVISION 125 

VIII. Representing the educational needs of the schools to the 
board members individually and at board meetings. 

IX. Keeping constantly before the teachers broad conceptions and 
high ideals, and encouraging in them renewed zeal for their lives of in- 
evitable routine and detail. 

To the success of supervision there have been set severe 
limitations. The first of these limitations is in the per- 
sonal equation of the supervisor. To suppress one's in- 
dividuality and to take on personality is the constant 
aim of the good supervisor. Personality is individuality 
changed and developed into sociality. No great success 
can ever come to any one who, as a supervisor, cannot 
divest himself of all notable idiosyncrasies, whether offen- 
sive or- not, and who cannot acquire that grace which is 
care for the opinions and interests of others. The true 
supervisor seeks the general welfare in forgetfulness of 
his immediate concerns. 

Personality, the appearance and the voice of the wise, 
who know life by experiencing it, and by the power of 
imagination living the life of others, is the glory of those 
who by education have reached true culture. The presence 
of a supervisor who has acquired this insight and this 
judgment, this sympathy and graciousness, is a joy to the 
schools wherein he serves. Obviously, the supervisor 
who cannot see himself as others see him, who cannot 
see others as they really are, who cannot see things 
from several points of view as far apart as the compass 
can point, is certain to be more or less of a failure. In 
the degree in which he can see truth and express it, 
he succeeds. In the degree of his blind prejudice, he 
fails. 

The second limitation of supervision is in the personal 
equation of the teachers who are supervised. This is out 



126 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

of the control of the supervisor, save in so far as he can 
select his own subordinates. 

The supervisor indeed supervises both teachers and 
pupils, and the latter he cannot select. Nevertheless, the 
strong man who is a supervisor, and the strong woman 
also, can create an atmosphere that seems to go about with 
them. " The children seem to change their nature," said 
a certain teacher, "when So-and-So enters the room." 
This is, in part, due to the authority any supervisor carries 
about with him ; but the influence, the atmosphere, of 
some supervisors is radiant with courage, kindness, and 
intelligence. Every one feels their power. Because the 
weak can and do respond to the strong, this second limita- 
tion of good supervision is less severe than the first. 

Where the supervisor can select his own subordinates, 
there, in the course of a few years, subject to the limita- 
tions of the pay-roll, the supervised teachers reflect the 
qualities of the supervisor. From this fact, the injustice 
of expecting a superintendent to create good schools, with- 
out giving him any influence in the selection of teachers, 
appears flagrant. 

The superintendent who is in a community willing to 
import teachers from elsewhere, that is, to employ so-called 
outsiders, is indeed fortunate. The staff composed wholly 
of local teachers^ is generally less desirable than the one 
composed wholly of teachers not native to the community. 
But that body of teachers is necessarily the best, in 
which at least one half are employed because of special 

* The local training school, historically considered, is a device to secure teachers of a 
minimum competence at a minimum price. As between a local teacher (that is, one native 
to the community) and a so-called outsider, the superintendent should always choose the 
better one, taking education and ability only into consideration. A local teacher trained in a 
State normal school with experience elsewhere should not be refused consideration because of 
having a home in the community. Political considerations should operate neither for nor 
against a candidate. 



SUPERVISION 127 

fitness, rather than because of accident of locality of birth 
or of training. 

The first principle that should guide a superintendent in the selec- 
tion of teachers nominated for a position in a school system where 
such a nomination is practically election, is to get for that teacher, or 
rather for that teaching position, as large a salary as is desirable, so that 
the best available candidate can be selected. Failing to secure the 
largest salary that is desirable, he should endeavor to get as large a 
salary as it is possible for him to get. On this basis, he is ready to go 
into the professional market. 

His second principle of action should be, that the most desirable 
candidate for the position must usually be sought for. It is true that 
good teachers are openly in the market ; but it is not true generally that 
the superintendent can secure, even from agencies, a file of applications 
that will include quite such good candidates as he can discover by per- 
sonal investigation, and especially by traveling about in other com- 
munities and in normal schools. 

The third principle is, that the superintendent should consider 
whether it is absolutely necessary to have for the position either a man 
or a woman, or whether, for this particular position, sex is a matter of 
indifference. 

For the fourth principle, he will form in his mind an opinion as to 
what training the teacher should have had, whether collegiate, normal, 
or technical, and in what school or schools. 

The fifth principle is one operative only in the larger communities, 
where, as a matter of educational policy, it is best to require the crea- 
tion of eligible lists. In such large communities, the more desirable 
candidates will be notified concerning the time and place of examination. 
In such examinations, it is usual to consider the scholarly qualifications 
as about sixty per cent, the education and references therefor about 
twenty per cent, and the experience and references therefor at about 
twenty per cent. 

The sixth consideration of the superintendent is personality. An 
experienced and wise superintendent is always inclined to consider 
good physique, buoyancy of spirit, cheerfulness, and culture as very 
important factors in the desirability of candidates. 

Such may be considered the affirmative principles of selection. It 
may be well to note what are the factors that a superintendent will not 



128 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

consider. He will pay little or no attention to any matters of religion 
or of backing by prominent people. He will certainly ignore any sup- 
port by politicians. 

The question whether or not the superintendent should favor a 
candidate who has private means is one that may be answered best by a 
statement of the important aspects involved. The teacher with private 
means is able to present a better personal appearance and to live 
better, and therefore to create a higher prestige for education than can 
the teacher without such means. Nevertheless, for the welfare of the 
profession, it seems best for educators to encourage the ambitious man 
or woman, who has worked his or her way forward in life, from condi- 
tions of poverty or of very moderate circumstances. Such persons are 
usually the most loyal to the profession itself, to the cause of education, 
and to the school authorities. A question sometimes arises as to 
whether a candidate who has other persons dependent on him or her 
for support, should be favored or set aside. In general, it may be said 
that such persons are most faithful, and, despite their handicaps, are 
likely to make, in the course of the years, the most valuable teachers 
in a school system. Their motive to succeed is stronger than that of 
the isolated single adult, and their effort stronger than that of the adult 
who is partly supported by a private income. 

To every teacher the study of human nature is both 
duty and necessity ; and by every teacher human nature 
must be studied both scientifically and artistically. To the 
man who knows men, women, and children, the second 
limitation of good supervision, that is, the weakness and 
wrongness of humanity, becomes an incentive to his soul. 

The third limitation of good supervision is the public's 
sense of the importance of education, the public's failure 
to understand the needs and ends of education. There is 
generally too little supervision of the right kind in our 
schools.^ The causes of this are twofold. The public 
does not know the need of good supervision and is not 
willing to provide enough of it in adequate variety. And 

1 For a discussion of the kinds of supervisors needed in the schools see Chapter VII, 
" The Supervisorship." 



SUPERVISION 129 

the public does not yet pay enough, even to the supervisors 
it now has, to attract an average high degree of talent.^ 

A sufficient amount of good supervision involves the employment of 
a considerable number of supervisors in proportion to the number of 
class teachers. For a town with four thousand children in eight schools, 
the supervising force ought to be, in ideal school conditions, somewhat 
as follows, namely : — 

One superintendent. 

One supervising high school principal. 

Seven supervising elementary school principals. 

One supervising evening school principal, with charge also of evening 
free lecture courses. 

One supervisor of kindergartens and primary work. 

One supervisor of art. 

One supervisor of manual training and domestic science. 

One supervisor of music. 

One supervisor of physical training. 

One consulting psychologist. 

One consulting sociologist. 

One consulting school physician and medical inspector. 

All of these are actually needed, as every man knows who is familiar 
with the schools and the pupils of to-day .^ 

We may be certain that within a few decades supervision will far 
exceed in range, in amount, and in quality what it is in our own genera- 
tion. 

The supervisor, in relation to the scholarship of his 
schools, is as a traveler going to a great and far country, 
to earn wages, and to bring back treasures from its vast 
stores of wealth. He must know the culture of the world, 
and from that culture he must take supplies to enrich his 
courses of study. The past forever lives in the present. 
Scholarship is a body of treasures remote from most men. 
The past is most of the life of the present, and survives in 
our ignorance, prejudice, cruelty, and selfishness. The 

1 See Chapter XVI, " Salary, Tenure, and Certificate." 

2 See Chapter VII, " The Supervisorship." 



I30 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

future in its realities is anticipated only in the thoughts of 
the wise ; the future is brought to reality only by the efforts 
of the strong. In his relation to the scholarship of his 
schools the supervisor must be both wise and strong. 

In relation to the children and youth, the supervisor is as 
a pioneer going into the great wilderness of primeval for- 
ests, to make there a home of civilization. Where was 
wrong or sin, he drives the furrows of righteousness ; where 
was ignorance, he plants knowledge ; where was dullness, 
he cultivates intelligence. Thus generation after genera- 
tion is redeemed from the wilderness of the past so that 
many a garden paradise blooms and yields fruit in the 
civilization of the present. 

In relation to his schools, the supervisor is as a seagoing 
captain of the mediaeval time upon a chartless sea. He 
has a compass and, when the night is clear, recognizes the 
polar star. But neither he nor any other man can know 
what lies beyond the horizon. 

As the poet Lowell has said, democracy adventures 
"chartless upon the sea of storm-engendering liberty." 
What storms may come, what lands be found, who knows ? 
All that the scholar can know is that supervision stands 
for increasing complexity in the organization of society; 
which, as Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Fiske, and other great 
thinkers of modern times have abundantly shown, means 
progress. 

Decade by decade, the social duties more and more dif- 
ferentiate, separate, and integrate. Time was when the 
parent was priest, teacher, physician, provider, warrior, 
builder, for his family. Then the clergy appeared, and 
the clergy were teachers. From the teachers came the 
principals. From the principals came supervisors. From 
the supervisors came superintendents. Distinct is the 



SUPERVISION 131 

modern division of labor, which is civilization. And the 
end is not yet. 

As the chief of the staff of supervisors, the superin- 
tendent ought to be primarily a supervisor rather than an 
administrator. When a board of education cannot find for 
its employ an educator who is competent in both respects, 
it ought to choose one who is stronger in supervision than 
in administration in the following conditions, namely : ^ — 

I. When the community already has really good schools. This must 
not be a matter of local opinion and tradition, but ought to be deter- 
mined by actual visits to other communities of the highest educational 
reputation. 

II. The community with a few schools and a narrow course of study. 

III. The community that has no great and peculiar difficulties.^ 

IV. The community that is willing to wait a few years to see good 
schools solidly built up and as good as possible. 

V. The community that is in doubt. 

Let such a community always take the scholarly supervisor rather 
than the brilliant administrator, when the salary available for the super- 
intendent does not command the services of an educator who is both 
skillful as a supervisor and forceful as an administrator. Most laymen 
are less likely to be deceived in the former quality than in the latter. 
Most boards are far more able to supply deficiencies in executive power 
than in professional knowledge. 

As the administrator must first administer well his own 
time, so the supervisor must supervise himself critically and 
relentlessly.^ 

The public expects much of the teachers, draining them 
of their resources of body, mind, and purse. But the 
public expects everything of the superintendent, who is 

1 There are about a dozen communities in this country with notably good schools; yet none 
of them has schools as good as they ought to be, for the sake of the children's mothers who 
bore them, and of this nation, that carries as its priceless freightage the dearest hopes of 
enlightened, free, and righteous humanity. 

2 See page iii, where the communities that need administrators are considered, 
s See page 303, Chapter XIV. 



132 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

the teacher of teachers. The power of self-criticism must 
be trained early in his life and must be exercised daily. 

The superintendent must have leisure. This seems im- 
possible to the man of endless cares and tasks and oppor- 
tunities of service. But it is the price of his soul's safety 
and of the progress of his schools. The poet Tennyson has 
said, " Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." This truth 
suggests the vital principle. The progress of the world 
has been due rather to thought than to work, to dreams 
and to plans primarily, for these are the inspiration of all 
wise activities. In the hours of leisure, thought may be 
organized. It is true that the teacher seldom does too 
many things, but it is also true that time spent in accumu- 
lating knowledge or in getting things done, is misspent, 
when spent at the price of health of body or health of 
mind. All successful teachers are in danger of falling 
into a habit of excessive work, from which the only recovery 
is in idleness or in vain recreation. 

School means "leisure," according to etymology. The 
real school seldom means this in practice either to teacher 
or to student. What is leisure ? To read poetry and phi- 
losophy, to hear and think music, to see art, to play, to 
travel and to observe, to make articles of beauty, to dis- 
cover truth. In such leisure, the vision is created anew. 
Then the soul gains power of loyalty to the great principles 
of truth, righteousness, beauty, and friendship. Then the 
mind discovers the differences and characteristics of the 
good and the bad, the better and the worse. In this lei- 
sure, the higher vision grows clear, and the spirit is regener- 
ated. It is the mountain air of the soul ; it is the upper 
view of the wide world. 



CHAPTER V 

THE SUPERINTENDENT 

The superintendent is supervisor and administrator, and 
more : he is the representative of the schools, their accred- 
ited ambassador to the pubHc.^ The superintendent is the 
central officer of the school system. The superintendency 
is the focal point. Around him the schools rotate. He has 
more real power (by custom only) than any other municipal 
employee, and usually has at least as large a salary as the 
mayor or treasurer, and often more. A larger amount of 
the local taxes usually goes to him than to any other public 
servant. He knows more people than the postmaster or 
the chief of police. Sooner or later every one has business 
with him ; all roads lead to his Rome. 

The records of a single day's business of a superin- 
tendent of a small system of schools and of a superintend- 
ent in a larger system usually show that the larger the 
city the less is the variety of cares, and the more dis- 
tinctly narrowed to educational topics. 

1 1 deal very plainly with this topic. In a large sense, it is the central topic of this book. 
The position of superintendent of schools is seriously misunderstood by most people, includ- 
ing most superintendents, for three reasons: first, the comparatively small salary that the 
office commands; second, the extreme weakness of the tenure; and third, the complete 
absence of real powers based upon statute law. The income of all government officers in a 
democracy is invariably small. Our United States minister to England, our consuls, our 
senators, our supreme Court justices, our governors of States, all are underpaid in com- 
parison with what men of no greater ability can earn in private business. A school 
superintendent is a " cheap " man compared with a bank cashier or a successful lawyer or 
physician or corporation manager. This belittles him in the eyes of those who think 
habitually only in dollars and cents, and who see, and have the power to see, only the family 
estate of the educator. Again, the superintendency too often is but the plaything of politics. 
The breath of democracy can and does make or mar the superintendent. See Chapter 
XVI, " Salary, Tenure, and Certificate." Finally, save by custom and by resolutions easily 
revoked, nearly all superintendents are entirely subordinate to their boards. 



134 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

A School Superintendent's Day in a Small City 

1. Inspected school building. Sent messenger for painter to repair 
window glass. Notified chief of police to follow up street " hoodlums " 
who broke glass. 

2. Read mail ; business letters from places large and small ; corre- 
spondence with colleges ; teachers' applications ; requests for subscrip- 
tions to help national charities ; calls to give addresses here and there, 
generally " gratis " ; answered mail. 

3. Mayor called to talk about next year's appropriations. 

4. Looked into a new text-book. 

5. Visited a school; sent one child home who had apparently an 
infectious disease ; discussed salary with a discontented teacher. 

6. Dictated circular letter to board of education regarding educa- 
tional and financial matters. 

7. Saw a text-book agent. 

8. Ate lunch ; interrupted by call of mother of sick child. 

9. Read and signed letters of reply to morning mail. 

10. Called at business place of board member; saw two politicians 
there ; discussed three R's as usual. 

1 1 . Held grade meeting ; gave sample lesson on " Mensuration." 

12. Visited by Catholic sisters from parochial school, regarding 
truants. 

13. Read afternoon mail; sent notes regretting absence from office 
to following callers : Presbyterian minister, carpenter to discuss repairs 
in a school building, mother of child suspended from school for 
misconduct. 

14. Made a statistical table. 

15. Ate dinner; caller on school matters came at 7 o'clock. 

16. Went to evening engagement, and was called on to speak. 

17. Read an hour and retired for the night.^ In a larger city half 
of the foregoing matters would seldom come to the attention of the 
superintendent. 

The business transacted by a superintendent of schools 

1 In addition, when on the street, the superintendent met people who were reminded that 
they wished to speak with the head of the schools about some child, or some change in course 
of study. The above would be an " easy day." For a hard day add a board or committee of 
the board meeting; or else a formal public address ; or the making of tests. A superintendent 
of schools may reasonably expect to have talks with fifty to a hundred different adults daily. 
Everything or anything said may be quoted or " twisted," in their report of the conversation. 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 1 35 

is equal daily to that transacted by a manager of a factory 
with as many employees as the schools have children. The 
former deals with labor and property ; the latter has the 
" cure of souls." Judge which has the more serious work, 
the greater responsibility. Undoubtedly, the school super- 
intendent has larger freedom than any business manager. 

The superintendent of schools, although in the employ of the board 
of education, is directly responsible to the board of education, and in- 
directly responsible to the parents, the taxpayers, and the community, 
as a component part of the State and nation. 

In at least one State ^ of the Union, the superintendent of 
a school system as such is subject to several more or less 
independent jurisdictions ; namely : to the State Superin- 
tendent of Public Instruction, who hears appeals from the 
decisions of municipal superintendents, and to whom 
various reports are sent ; to the State board of education 
which prescribes various rules and regulations for the 
government of municipal schools; to the State board of 
examiners, which by direction of the State legislature and 
under the rules of the State board of education examines 
teachers, — among the rules there being one requiring 
every municipal superintendent to hold a State license to 
teach ; to the county superintendent of schools in matters 
relating to State appropriations and school attendance; 
to the local board of education for his own appointment 
and continuance in office, and for many matters upon 
which the State legislation is incomplete, or in which 
the State delegates power to the local board ; and to the 
municipal board of examiners in respect to eligible lists 
from which to make nominations of teachers. 

Often there is an apparent, sometimes a real, conflict 
between these governing authorities. At such times, a 

1 New Jersey. 



136 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

thorough knowledge of the school laws of the State and 
of the rules and regulations of all the school governing 
bodies, together with the special rights of the municipality 
as displayed in its charter or act of incorporation, if 
any, becomes indispensable. Every school superintendent 
ought to know enough of law to avoid errors himself and 
to guide aright the actions of his own board of education. 

It is the legal and political aspect of the superintend- 
ency that, in view of the possibility of holding a superin- 
tendency for life, makes it one of the greatest public offices 
in our nation to-day. In the very nature of mayoralties, 
governorships, the presidency itself, the tenure is perfect 
but limited. No man as mayor can serve his city with 
a reasonable hope of serving it all his remaining life, or 
until he goes elsewhere to another mayoralty.^ Judges, 
senators, occasionally municipal engineers, hold office for 
life, by various reelections and appointments. As in the 
case of certain United States judges and municipal officers, 
superintendents are now sometimes appointed " during 
good behavior." 

The city superintendent lives by public favor. He is 
one of the few men in the community whose income is 
willingly granted. The man who, living in conformity 
with our laws of property and behavior, collects private 
wealth or performs private service, never has the one 
satisfaction of the public servant who can say, " If my 
neighbors did not wish me to live here, I would not be 
here." Cities are inclined to discount too much from the 
salary of the superintendent because of this satisfaction. 
The man who in private business would be able to earn 

1 Professor Ely, in his " The Coming City," seriously proposes that America adopt the 
German custom of employing as mayors men as well trained to that form of public service as 
superintendents of schools are trained for their duties. The proposition is worth considering. 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 1 37 

five thousand dollars is likely to receive two thousand 
dollars in any kind of public service. It is regrettable that 
the hardship of the lot of the superintendent falls chiefly 
upon his wife and children. Yet even to them is a measure 
of return in the social position of the husband and father, 
who, in the eyes of all citizens, rich and poor, wise and 
ignorant, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, and non-churchgoer, 
represents the city's standard of culture. 

The duties of this man who holds this central position 
in the cultural life of the city may be expressed in various 
forms : — 

I. The superintendent represents culture in its effort to 
reach the new generation. 

II. He is the intermediary between the teachers and 
the board of education ; as it were, an arbitrator. 

III. He is the attorney for the teachers. 

IV. He is the chief executive officer who serves the 
board of education. 

V. He is the paid advocate of progress and is false to 
his trust when he surrenders even in defeat. 

VI. He is the head of the schools. 

VII. He is the acknowledged leader of educational 
progress. 

The responsibilities of the school superintendent begin 
with these duties and radiate outward to the limits of the 
horizon of his own conscience. These responsibilities ap- 
pear in a consideration of the perils that seem to lie in 
wait for him everywhere. 

I. The greatest peril of any superintendent is the peril from losing 
confidence in his own success. The man who can secure an election as 
superintendent of the schools in any community has already made a 
certain success. In 1900, there were some two thousand men who could 
be classed as superintendents of schools. Less than one hundred of 



138 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

these received as much as $3000 a year, it is true, yet every one repre- 
sented the standard of educational culture of his community. 

The superintendent who fears that he will not be retained in his office 
and that he will not be able to secure another as desirable or better has 
not yet thoroughly prepared himself for his duties ; ^ either he has ceased 
to grow intellectually or else has not taken due care of his health, or 
perhaps has done such things as to deserve discharge and removal from 
the profession. 

It is evidence that tenure is needed for superintendents that in most 
States of the Union the number of superintendents who have had 
twenty-five years of experience in their position seldom exceeds more 
than two or three. Most lawyers and physicians remain all their lives 
in the community in which they begin their practice. In certain of the 
religious denominations, the lifelong pastorate is not uncommon, while 
in the Catholic Church, the principle of life tenancy in a parish is recog- 
nized as desirable for the welfare of the Church. 

The school superintendent, who is elected year after year, knows that 
in any flurry of public excitement he may possibly lose his position. In 
one of the Northern States of the Union, the average term of a superin- 
tendency is two years. This is a scandalous state of affairs. 

A timid man has not the energy and the courage to secure progress 
in his schools. 

2. The second peril of the superintendent is the peril of physical 
overwork. Many a man makes mistakes from physical weariness and 
mental and nervous fatigue. 

The overfatigue cannot always be avoided, but no man of good 
sense who is fatigued attempts to do work of the responsible nature of a 
school superintendency. One bad mistake, or an accumulation of little 
mistakes, may wreck the career of a good man. The sensible superin- 
tendent when fatigued does not go out to his school duties and thereby 
risk errors, does not go on to nervous exhaustion and thereby risk 
retirement as an invalid ; on the contrary, he goes to bed and gets 
rested, with or without the care of a physician. 

The competent superintendent knows as much about physiology, 
hygiene, and medicine as he does about law ; that is, the fundamentals. 
He ought to know as much as one who has studied law or medicine at 
least a year or so. 

Far better to deny one's self to callers and to cancel the engagements 

1 See Chapter XIV, " Education for Supervision." 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 1 39 

of a day or two, than to take any form of a stimulant, dry or fluid, drug 
or liquor, and risk a blunder or a disease. Better to lose a battle than 
a campaign. In life, campaigns are won often with more defeats in 
battle than victories. 

3. Another peril of the superintendent is a low physical tone. The 
variety of a superintendent's work tends to good health and spirits. 
Yet he needs physical power, to resist opponents and critics. Such 
power is secured and maintained only by exercise, out of doors as much 
as possible, regular and judicious. Chest, lung, stomach, and arm exer- 
cises are especially important.^ 

4. Another peril of the school superintendent is a lowering of the 
moral tone. He sees a great many things that tend to embitter him 
against humanity. He gets "inside" views. He hears many critics. 
Said a disgruntled board chairman to the school superintendent, " Oh, 
well, you hear only the compliments." "No," replied the superintend- 
ent, " I hear only the complaints." He sees brutal treatment of children 
by parents, rich men concealing their wealth from tax assessors, the 
wages of the poor squandered on liquor and tobacco ; religious debates 
and " sociables," instead of charitable work for the poor and ignorant ; 
public officers performing, or trying to perform, the duties of offices for 
which they are incompetent in ability and experience and unfit in 
morals ; and a democratic government exploited for the benefit of the 
few. He sees these things as an " insider," often under conditions 
where to reveal the facts would be to betray a trust and to endanger 
the peace and prosperity of the schools. He is compelled to stifle the 
voice of conscience lest in some hot moment he undo the constructive 
work of years. But unless he would cease to be good and to do good, 
he must not quiet his conscience itself. Rather must he persistently 
vitalize, educate, and improve his own moral life, knowing that there 
comes a fullness of time when he can speak and act and achieve. 
Even in morals, opportunity cannot be forced. This may seem to the 
private citizen casuistry. On the contrary, it is statesmanship. 

To illustrate : There was a man on a certain board of education who 
blocked every increase of teachers' salaries, yet worked for new schools, 
better text-books, and enlarged courses of study. What the commu- 
nity especially needed was an improved material equipment. Rather 

1 Said a bitter opponent of a certain school superintendent, after calling upon him for the 
first time: " He does not look it; but when I heard his voice, I knew I could not effect my 
purpose. His signature is a challenge. He likes a battle." 



140 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

than help force out this only partially enlightened board member, the 
superintendent helped to keep him on the board until all that he was 
good for had been secured. Then, at an opportune time, the member 
was dropped in such fashion that he continued outside of the board 
as a strong friend of the schools. Similarly, at a later period, a man 
objectionable in many other ways was assisted in getting upon the 
board because he advocated higher salaries. 

To illustrate another phase of the matter : For a long period of 
years a superintendent knew that a certain board member was system- 
atically using his office for his own profit, quietly, benefiting to the 
extent of one hundred dollars a year, a relatively small sum. Yet this 
man was a pillar of strength in every issue for progress, and in a political 
sense " owned a ward " that had no other intelligent citizen available for 
board membership. The superintendent bided his time. At length 
a suitable man appeared as an opposing candidate. Without publicity, 
lest a school scandal should arise, the corrupt member was persuaded 
to go out of the board. 

5. A peril of the superintendent is the waste of energy, for example, 
in text-book making,^ or in giving public addresses, professional or 

1 The subject of text-book making should be carefully investigated. In modern competi- 
tive business the chances of success in the case of a text-book are not one in ten. To succeed 
the book must be: — 

I. Uncommonly good. 
II. Well advertised. 

III. Pushed by a responsible house. 

IV. Adapted to meet a real need. 

• 

Few manuscripts are uncommonly good. Only a few publishing houses advertise well 
and systematically. There are only a few strong houses. In nearly all subjects now in our 
school courses of study there are good text-books. Few, when carefully examined, are per- 
fect. Methods change, and new books are then demanded. Superintendents, however, are 
not the men to undertake the work, but rather principals and supervisors, whose evenings 
at home at least are free. The hoped-for royalties are seldom realized. Books made for cash 
payment are never adequately paid for when the time required to make them is considered. 
There are not a few failures of publishing houses. No doubt some books are made solely 
to exploit a theory. No doubt also the experience of making a text-book is professionally 
valuable. Finally, now and then a book makes a success, giving the author an annual 
income through a period of years of hundreds of dollars. There are almost no capitalists in 
school-teaching ; there are no wealthy family physicians; the work is too hard in both 
cases. The man who can bravely bear up under wrongs or disappointments is the only man 
who can safely undertake the making of books. He must be ready to forgive his friends 
for not using his books and his publishers for advising him to write them. The publishers 
always have as the first end in view, — the making of money. Sometimes they have another 
also, the improving of their texts in a particular line, and sometimes, the completing of their 
" lists." The superintendent who does contract to make a book ought to make it thoroughly 
and to make it himself. 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 141 

popular. A school superintendent ought to be both a good speaker 
and a good writer, though several other qualifications are considerably 
more important. 

6. The superintendent is in peril of losing the equal social qualities 
and assuming the air of a bureaucrat or an autocrat. This is bad in 
politics and as a matter of character. He does so much in the way of 
authority that he is apt to assume the air of a ruler and to adopt the 
language of an "official." This peril creeps on slowly but surely. In 
certain quarters, official dignity becomes fashionable. Natural-born 
Americans, of native-born ancestry for a few generations, seldom as- 
sume this dignity, for it amounts to an affront to one's fellow-citizens 
and is essentially undemocratic. To keen men it is amusing. 

An even greater peril is that of feeling personally the humiliations 
visited or attempted upon every superintendent in any city of small size. 
For various reasons, some people attempt to lower the office of super- 
intendent. These attempts must be neither resented nor submitted to, 
but ignored. 

Illustrations abound. The rich man who has sent all his children to 
private schools insists upon forcing into the superintendent's mind the 
fact that the public schools are charities for the poor. Similarly the 
man " of old family." 

The politician, especially the political "boss," desires the super- 
intendent to know that when he " says the word, out the superintendent 
goes." Is not the superintendent a creature of his favor ? The self- 
reliant man knows that he is not unless he chooses to be. 

The successful physician and the successful lawyer, living elegantly 
in their own homes, pity the superintendent, knowing that he works as 
hard or harder, but had not the wit to go into their line of work. They 
forget that their professions, upon the economic side, are less fully 
developed ; that in the course of time, physicians and lawyers may serve, 
not for fees, but for salaries ; that the private physician may relapse 
into the rank of the private school-teachers, and the public physician 
will develop into the rank of the public school-teachers. The enormous 
growth of the free dispensaries in cities, the development of medical 
inspection in schools, the increase of public hospitals and asylums, and 
the growing power and activity of boards of health all seem to presage 
the day of free, that is, government-supported, medicine and surgery. 

7. The seventh peril of the superintendent is that he will talk either 
too much or too little. Much of his work is judicial, and needs close 



142 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

reasoning and little speech. Much of it is inspirational, and needs 
imagination and exposition. The man who talks too much cheapens 
himself; he who talks too little, loses many an opportunity to do good. 

There are always people about who are trying to " draw " the super- 
intendent. They mean to get him to commit himself, often before he 
has seen fully the conditions involved in a matter. But there are also 
many persons about who fear his power, and who would be delighted 
never to hear from him at all. A few words fitly spoken often spoil a 
scheme. 

In a certain city, a plan injurious to the largest interests of the city 
had been decided upon by the leaders. A casual remark of a person 
who had heard of it but was considered too unimportant to be pledged 
to secrecy (sometimes such a pledge is a guarantee of publication) 
caused the superintendent to go to one of the persons involved, and to 
make inquiries. He was given the facts, and asked to say nothing, 
whereupon he flatly told his informant that he had come to get public 
information. A half-column in a local paper that same day broke up 
the plan and the conspiracy at once. 

8. The next peril of the superintendent is running into debt and 
borrowing of politicians or rich men, or persons interested in local 
school affairs. Going into debt beyond one's assets is often unavoid- 
able by a man who has no control of the amount of his income, and no 
way to supplement it. Two thousand dollars is perhaps an average 
salary of school superintendents in communities of from eight to twenty- 
five thousand inhabitants. What does this mean ? 

It is received by a man who undoubtedly went into teaching imme- 
diately after graduation from college, and who succeeded rather better 
than most of his classmates. This man, with perhaps the interruption 
of a year or two of post graduate work, has given his entire time to 
school work, which is non-economic. He has handled money once a 
month to receive it, and for a few days more to expend it. He has had 
special uses for money. From twenty to thirty years of age he has 
earned one thousand dollars, or at most fifteen hundred dollars a year. 
Now as a school superintendent, at thirty-five or forty-five years of age, 
he probably has a family to support. Few bachelors attain school 
superintendencies. 

Being a man of intelligence and self-reliance, he has saved perhaps 
a tenth of his salary annually. It requires no great calamity to throw 
such a man into debt. 



THE SUPERINTENDENT I43 

This two thousand dollars' salary may be paid in a city remote from 
large centers of population, where food is relatively cheap and house 
rent relatively low. But, on the other hand, his circumstances may 
be these, namely; — 

A thriving suburban city where the standard of living for the families 
with whom his own associate is high ; a son in college ; a daughter in 
the normal school; smaller children at home; an invalid and aged 
mother, and a wife whose very culture is a bar against her doing her 
"own work," because she sees other things still more important to 
do. Already he has drawn upon his savings to educate his children. 
Precipitate upon this man any form of financial calamity, and he is 
forced into debt. Of whom shall he borrow ? 

He cannot try to carry " back bills " with the tradespeople ; that 
would hurt him in politics. Besides, "forced loans" are against his 
principles, and he objects to borrowing of poor people. Local politi- 
cians will be glad to lend him money ; that is an easy way to buy him. 
Rich men will not object ; they like to " play philanthropist " in such 
circumstances. Persons for any reasons interested in school contracts 
or purchases are ready to lend. 

The man who has no assets, — no real estate, bonds, stocks, notes, — 
should avoid all these men. That way lies danger. Let him borrow, 
when he can, of a regular banking institution, getting his creditors to 
take and indorse his notes. Failing that, let him sell his books and his 
furniture. In several instances, a move of this sort, bona fide, under 
pressure has forced an increase of salary from a reluctant community. 
Failing that also, let such a man go out of the profession, as many 
another good man has done, for this very reason, and let him go into a 
line where his debts will not be a matter of public knowledge and con- 
cern. This is the only way to save character and reputation, for the 
insolvent school superintendent loses both, and soon after loses even 
the superintendency. 

Credit is a bribe to extravagance. No poor man ought ever to buy 
anything on credit except the necessaries of the physical life ; namely, 
food, clothing, medicine, fuel, and shelter. 

9. A similar important peril of the school superintendent is in 
underestimating the value of his services as his experience increases 
and his community grows in population. There is, perhaps, no one 
respect in which school superintendents as a class do more to 
block educational progress than in their failure to press upon their 



144 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

communities^ their own claims for financial improvement. The man 
who supervises ten schools and a hundred teachers may not be worth 
twice the salary or give twice the service of the man who supervises 
five schools and fifty teachers, but he certainly is worth more because 
a higher order of ability is required. As one's schools grow in number 
and in attendance, an increase in compensation may well be requested 
and worked for. The older a man is, as the head of a family, the more 
money he requires. 

Perhaps no criticism is more unfair than the criticism of some teach- 
ers of the superintendent's salary. It is almost invariably true : — 

I. That where the superintendent's salary is relatively high, teachers' 
salaries are high, and that where his salary is low, theirs are low. 

II. That the man who cannot secure an increase in his own salary 
can do very little to help teachers get increases. 

III. That women's salaries as teachers, supervisors, and principals, 
are relatively nearer the incomes of business women, and that men's 
salaries as teachers, supervisors, principals, and superintendents, are 
much farther below the incomes of business men. 

The greatest school problem is how to double the salaries of experi- 
enced women teachers, and of experienced men supervisors. This is 
not for the sake of the individuals themselves, but for the sake of secur- 
ing a better quality of abihty in the teaching profession. 

10. The last important peril of the superintendent is in too closely 
identifying himself with some local and partial institution or society. 

Joyously as the tradespeople welcome the arrival of the new superin- 
tendent to get his " trade," not less joyously do church people, lodge 
enthusiasts, and party workers welcome him. Doubtless he is already 
a member of some church, or at least a regular attendant, and a member 
of several secret societies, and a partisan to a degree of some great 
national party. He is now asked to join a church and to take a Sunday- 
school class, probably the Bible class, and to come regularly to prayer 
meeting and " take part." The lodges with which he is identified by 

1 See Chapter XVI, " Salary, Tenure, and Certificate." The question whether salaries 
would rise faster, if all successful superintendents declined calls to other communities at higher 
salaries, is not easily answered. Large cities often let successful superintendents go rather 
than increase their salaries, because they know there will be many applicants for the vacancy. 
On the other hand, small places would perhaps never raise salaries except for fear of losing 
satisfactory men. But over against this is the fact that the man who has been a long time in a 
place is the man with the largest influence and therefore most able to secure a salary increase. 
Finally, to such a man a board may reply that since he was willing to stay so long for such 
and such a salary, why should he now wish more pay ? 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 145 

transfer may give " spreads " in his honor, and other lodges will seek 
his support. All the working members of his own national political 
party seek him out for " contributions " at least, and probably for 
" speeches." 

He is certainly upon the horns of dilemma. In medio tutissima via 
is the only maxim that should guide him. " When in doubt, do noth- 
ing " is the only caution that can save him. "When asked in a hurry 
to give a reply, I always answer, * No,' " said one successful administra- 
tor of schools. 

The " superiority of politics over divinity " is indeed, as Lord Acton 
says, the keynote of the modern age. The Church as a universal insti- 
tution has passed away. There now survive many separate churches. 
In theory, most of the churches have no barriers against each other. 
Membership transfers are arranged amicably. But there are many non- 
churchgoers ; a full majority indeed of the people of most cities seldom 
or never go to church. Further, though religious differences, except as 
between Roman Catholicism and orthodox Protestantism, are almost 
forgotten, social rivalries are keen. In a small city, a school superin- 
tendent who desires the support of as many people as possible, and the 
opposition of none as a class, can seldom afford to identify himself as 
an enthusiast with one particular church of a single denomination. A 
school superintendent who is a strictly non-churchgoer will arouse less 
opposition than the man who is also a Sunday-school superintendent 
and a weekly exhorter at prayer meetings. 

The thoroughly educated, widely informed school superintendent 
finds it extremely difficult to express himself in the religious and theo- 
logical language of any church. He is accustomed to think in the 
terms of ethics, of economics, and of politics. He is accustomed to 
think of the interests rather of an entire community than of a single 
church. Further, he usually needs part at least of Sunday for rest and 
several evenings in the week for school work.^ 

The school superintendent who understands that the sole use of poli- 
tics is to promote the public welfare, and who, in the ordinary sense of 
the term " politics," takes no part in them, may look upon his educational 
service in a particular community as a campaign with battle after battle. 
When he so considers it, he must remember that it is possible to win the 

1 A school superintendent prospered for several years. He then became a Sunday-school 
superintendent. His wife entered upon the propaganda of rational Christian Socialism. His 
tenure became weak, and his superintendency terminated within two years. 



146 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

campaign though losing most of the battles. He should in fact con- 
sider every battle wholly with reference to its relation to the campaign. 
It is often worth while to fight a battle, though anticipating certain de- 
feat. A year or two later, in another battle fought for the same purpose 
and on the same lines, he may be able to win victory. In his relation 
to the board of education during the progress of all his educational 
battles and campaigns, he must remember that he is the only man who 
intends to remain throughout life in the work of education, and that 
therefore of right and of obligation his interest in educational progress 
greatly exceeds theirs. 

A progressive superintendent may look upon his lifelong service in 
the cause of education as a series of years of plowing, planting, cul- 
tivating, and harvesting. When he so considers his educational service, 
he will remember that it is as important to harvest the crop properly as 
it is to prepare the ground and to cultivate the growing crop. Appar- 
ently, more school superintendents fail at harvest time than at seedtime. 
To carry out the analogy, he will remember that every crop depends 
upon the nature of the seed sown; that the quality of every crop 
depends upon the soil in which it is sown, the kind of cultivation, and 
the influences of the season. In other words, the school superintendent 
will give no slight attention to planning and reflecting upon his pur- 
poses, his ends, his methods, and the degree and character of interest 
that he takes in the cause. In the long years, the man of reflection will 
render far better service than the man of impulses. 

No man can afford to fight too many battles, to present too many 
issues. He loses too many diff'erent sets of friends thereby, and makes 
too many enemies. There are two other matters that are not "perils," 
but temptations. 

I . The ambitious and wide-awake superintendent is apt to see good 
business opportunities for "the investment of a little money." His 
savings are earning perhaps four per cent in the savings bank or five 
per cent in a mortgage or two. He thinks he sees a chance to make 
ten per cent. Shall he do it? If the chance leads him to lend his 
money out of his reach by easy and cheap visiting, no, not by any 
means. He may get forty or fifty dollars a year more out of an invest- 
ment of one thousand dollars, but he will spend more than forty or 
fifty dollars' worth of time thinking about it. If the investment is local 
and all its conditions are well within his knowledge, and if he knows 
that the board will not refiise to increase his salary on the ground that 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 147 

he is already able to save a lot of money, yes. Some personal touch 
with business is a good thing for the educational administrator. 

To illustrate : He may lend money to a tradesman or small manu- 
facturer who desires to extend his business. Or he may go into 
partnership (silent) with a carpenter, or mason, or other contractor, 
provided that none of them does any work for the schools. It is not 
politically wise to help to finance a local newspaper, unless it is the 
only newspaper. The purchase of vacant land as a speculation seldom 
makes political or personal enemies, though it sometimes makes men 
poor. To become a '' taxpayer " is usually a wise move, and one to be 
made as soon as possible.^ 

A form of this temptation is the purchase of a home. There are 
reasons for and against this. With building and loan associations in 
almost all communities of any considerable size nowadays, it is usually 
possible to buy a home. The advantages are as follows, namely : — 

I. Relief from the guardianship of an interested landlord. 

II. Settling down in one's property and avoidance of moving an- 
nually, thus creating a home. 

III. Entrance upon the rank and dignity of " taxpayer." 

IV. Giving the public to understand that one is not restless and in- 
clined to "throw everything up" and to "try things over again" 
elsewhere. 

V. Setting a good example to families inclined to prefer tenancies 
to permanent social relationships. 

The disadvantages are as follows, namely : — 

I. During the first few years the danger of being forced to sell out at 
a loss when leaving. Improved real estate falls in value ten times 
where it rises once. The buildings deteriorate faster than the value of 
the land increases. 

II. Giving the impression that one thinks one owns his superin- 
tendency ; this is "bear baiting" the politicians and the critics. 

III. The heavier expense until the home is paid for. The annual 
costs of a home with a heavy mortgage are higher than most annual 
rents. Few men can afford to invest their own or their relatives' money 
in home real estate. The interest earned is less. 

IV. The necessity of declining offers of positions elsewhere unless 
the salary is much larger. This, however, is not wholly a disadvantage 
to the individual and is almost always a good thing for the community. 

1 See page 158. 



148 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

In general, for men with families after the second year in a com- 
munity, it is best to purchase a home. The second is the critical year. 
Even competent men may fail of reelection then. Competent men are 
seldom discharged after three years' service. The public by that time 
knows them. 

2. A second temptation is that of trying too many issues at a time 
with the board of education and the public ; and of trying big issues 
and small at the same time. The wise superintendent throws many 
small issues upon leading progressive board members, principals, and 
supervisors. A board of education gets tired granting too many re- 
quests to one man ; the superintendent makes too many different oppo- 
nents by asking too much at a time. A new school superintendent 
found that the community whose election he had secured had : — 

No kindergartens, no male teachers, no supervising principals, no 
science laboratories, no definite English course in any school, no Greek 
or French in the high school, no Nature study, no superintendent's 
office and no superintendent's secretary, no ventilation systems, no 
sanitation systems, no evening schools, not enough schoolhouses, no 
adjustable desks, no all-day janitor service, no slate blackboards, not 
enough text-books on the "approved list," not enough books and 
supplies, not enough library books in class rooms, no school decorations, 
no evening free lecture course, few high school electives, no manual 
training, no physical training, no compulsory attendance, no medical 
inspection, and not enough money for school use. 

In the course of ten years, he got all these and more, but he got 
them one or two at a time. He lost many a battle, but not the cam- 
paign. For one opponent, he made five allies. He says there are other 
things to get : — 

More money for higher salaries, finer school buildings, more super- 
visors, an added high school year, etc., etc. 

This superintendent would certainly have been defeated for his first 
reelection, had he attempted to secure all these things at once. " See 
how Nature does things, how quietly, how surely," was a favorite saying 
of Charles Pratt, the philanthropist who founded Pratt Institute. Verily, 
" Rome was not built in a day." 

It is extremely unwise to announce all of the program for educational 
improvement to even the best supporters of progress. The ablest and 
most progressive layman is not ready to go forward as fast as the 
really competent and progressive schoolmaster. When any school 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 



149 



superintendent finds that any board member is as progressive and 
intelligent about school affairs as he is, the hour has struck for that 
school superintendent to go a-visiting and to read some modern educa- 
tional literature. 

The complexity of a superintendency is due to manifold, 
multiform relations. 

1. The most immediate of the relationships of a school 
superintendent is that with the board of education.^ 

The board legally controls the schools, more or less 
with the advice of the superintendent of education. It 
represents the democracy, he represents the schools. It 
represents governmental power, he represents cultural 
influence. He is its servant, to give its orders to the 
school; it is his messenger to inform and persuade the 
public. The board is impersonal, a soulless, because a 
deathless, corporation. It owes him money from time to 
time ; he owes it counsel and obedience all the time. The 
man who would wittingly and willingly violate an order of 
the board of education or deceive it as to the truth is unfit 
to serve as a school superintendent. He whose conscience 
orders him to disobey hears falsely the voice of duty, for 
conscience tells that man to resign. And then when he 
resigns, the conscience of the public will order the board 
to reinstate him after withdrawing its order. 

2. The next near relationship of the superintendent of 
public instruction is with the officers of the board of educa- 
tion and with the chairmen of its several committees. In 
the absence of board resolutions and pending board meet- 
ings, the officers and the chairmen constitute with the 
superintendent the governing authority. He owes to these 
men truth and good advice, and they owe to him the same, 

1 See Chapter II, " The Board of Education." See also " Index " : — Board of Education; 
Superintendent. 



I50 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

together with support in any emergency. The board 
member who, when the superintendent calls, pleads " pri- 
vate business," must be sure that he is entirely justified by 
the extraordinary importance of that " private business." 
It is the essence of the democratic scheme that public busi- 
ness is paramount. This is true even though the board 
members serve without pay. The member who frequently 
pleads "private business" is in great danger of serving 
without honor as well as without pay. 

3. Similarly, with every board member, the relationship 
of the superintendent ought to be one of entire frankness. 
The worse the board member, the greater should be the 
superintendent's effort to lay open to him all the facts. 

To illustrate: A superintendent visited a very antagonistic board 
member, spending several hours, and earnestly advocating a certain 
policy. Years followed. The board member voted consistently against 
the superintendent and all his progressive measures. Later, the super- 
intendent was amazed to hear this particular man arise in a public 
meeting and advocate one of the superintendent's measures, pronounc- 
ing him the most far-sighted man in the community. Next year, as 
usual, he voted against the reappointment of the superintendent but his 
was the only vote on that side, for he had lost his power with all other 
members of the board. None could any longer be convinced by his 
words that the superintendent was too costly a luxury. To illustrate 
again : For several years, a certain board member continued obdurate. 
Without warning, he suddenly changed. When asked his reason, he 
replied : " That man is sincere. I don't agree with him ; but I have 
made up my mind that if he is wrong, he is stronger in the wrong than 
I am in the right." He never again voted against the superintendent 
upon an important issue. 

4. A fourth relationship is with the supervisors.^ 

In the very nature of their positions, the supervisors are 
nearer to the superintendent than any other teachers. 
They are employed primarily because he has not the time 

1 See Chapter VII, " The Supervisorship." 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 151 

to give adequate supervision in their lines. They are his 
eyes to see and his hands to execute. Either their subjects 
are highly technical or else their fields are very broad. 
When their subjects are technical, individually the super- 
visors probably know more about their subjects than he 
does ; but they do not see them in their relations with other 
subjects. 

To illustrate : The difficulty of getting a good musician or artist as 
supervisor is so great that few superintendents in small cities care to 
add the further requirement that the supervisor shall know something 
definite about the general school course and see all the relations of art 
or music to the children's educational progress. 

The school superintendent needs to have frequent regu- 
lar conferences with the supervisors individually. He 
should inform them as to his objects and purposes, and 
they should inform him as to their methods and devices. 
Equally with the board members, the principals and super- 
visors are entitled to know the opinions of the school 
superintendent regarding their work and the general or 
special conditions in the schools. 

The school superintendent should cause it definitely to 
be understood by principals, teachers, and students, among 
whom the supervisors go, that they are his official agents 
in schools and class rooms. All supervisors should file 
written reports of their visits and discoveries, and of the 
lessons given and grade meetings held by them. These 
reports should be systematic in form and should be made 
at regular intervals. 

5. The fifth relationship of the superintendent is with 
the principals of the separate schools, and is the most 
difficult of all relationships to maintain satisfactorily. The 
reason for this lies in the customary tenure of principals. 
In any city school system where supervising principals are 



152 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

regularly employed, their appointment is usually during 
good behavior. When they become unsatisfactory in their 
positions, the most that a superintendent can do is to recom- 
mend their transfer. This usually widens the breach of 
alienation between them, though it sometimes lessens the 
injury done to the school system by incompetent or dis- 
loyal service. On the other hand, the principals are the 
most important of the superintendent's subordinates. When 
the superintendent has been educated, as he should be, far 
more thoroughly than the principals ; when his experience 
has been, if not longer, much wider ; and when his natural 
ability is greater, — he usually has no serious difficulty in 
establishing and maintaining his leadership. 

Every superintendent should consider every principal as 
the head of his school, and all directions to teachers should 
go through him or should be given in his presence. Fre- 
quently, when the superintendent visits schools, he should 
invite the principal to go to the class rooms with him. 
The principals should constitute a council to meet fort- 
nightly with the superintendent for advice and discussion. 
The principals should be consulted invariably with regard 
to transfers and promotions of teachers, and, when pos- 
sible, with regard to the appointment of new teachers. 

All principals should be expected to file reports at regu- 
lar intervals with regard to the progress of their classes 
and the quality of the instruction of their teachers. All 
minor matters, such as repairs and supplies needed, should 
be regularly reported. In general, the relation of the 
superintendent to the principals is that of an associate 
colleague, the superintendent having the larger field, and 
the principal having the smaller field, but dealing with it 
more thoroughly. In this way, the freedom of the princi- 
pal finds room for enthusiastic activity. 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 1 53 

6. The superintendent has relations with the teachers as 
a body and as individuals. He should hold several general 
teachers' meetings annually, and occasionally should go to 
the meetings of the grades and for special subjects. The 
grade meetings may have regular leaders, to be selected 
from the teachers or principals, while the meetings for 
special subjects are naturally led by the supervisors or by 
teachers especially appointed by the superintendent. In 
addition, there will be the meetings for their own teachers, 
conducted by the principals of the several schools. 

In general, the teachers of each separate school form 
one body, to be dealt with as such. The superintendent 
ought to see that the corps of teachers of no one school is 
conspicuously better or worse than that of any other school. 
For the safety of his school system, he will place his strong- 
est teachers with his weakest principals. Where he cannot 
discharge poor teachers, he will alternate the weak teach- 
ers with the good throughout the grades, so that no child 
will have two poor teachers in succeeding years. Lastly, 
he will place very good teachers in schools where the dis- 
cipline is especially hard. He will cause an appointment 
to a bad neighborhood to be considered a compliment to 
a teacher's ability and character. Where teachers are 
known to be disloyal to principals, he will transfer them ; 
and when the disloyalty continues in the new positions, he 
will find means to remove them from the school system. 

So much for the relations of the school superintendent 
to the teachers as employees of the schools. He should 
be the attorney of every teacher personally and be ready 
to advise freely with each one on educational and personal 
matters. Undoubtedly, he should be known as an advo- 
cate for higher salaries for teachers. This is to-day the 
most important question before the American nation for 



154 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

its positive social betterrnent. Many teachers are young 
and inexperienced; often they are far away from home. 
Many naturally have larger confidence in the superin- 
tendent than in the principals, both because the superin- 
tendent is nearer the board of education and because his 
responsibilities are heavier. There is a certain gravitation 
of those with burdens toward those who already have many. 

Finally, every teacher should understand from the day 
of employment that in every case of discipline, irrespective 
of mistakes, the superintendent will support his or her 
authority. When the error has been so serious that he 
cannot do this, it will be sufficiently serious for him to 
request from the teacher an application for a month's 
leave of absence.^ 

7. In the nature of the case, the superintendent's relation 
to the pupils must be somewhat formal. However, every 
school child who is old enough to understand the matter 
should know that he has the right of appeal to the super- 
intendent, whether his parents go with him or not. The 
right of appeal is an essential feature of democracy. 
Without it, there can be no freedom and equality. The 
superintendent should occasionally visit the school assem- 
blies and talk to the boys and girls on matters of ethics, 
athletics, and social relations. In the high school and in 
the higher grammar grades, the superintendent may wisely 
reenforce the instruction of principals and teachers in 
regard to alcoholic liquors, tobacco, gambhng, loafing, 
practical joking, and like habits of imperfectly educated 
men.2 But most of his talks ought to be inspirational, 
dealing with the highest ideals of men. 

1 For further discussion of this question see Chapter XVI, " Salary, Tenure, and 
Certificate," 

' Whatever may be said about the morality of the man who visits saloons and who smokes 
tobacco on the street, it is certain that no one in the position of a teacher, whether as an 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 1 55 

8. The next relation of the superintendent is with the 
parents. To them his office door is always open, and from 
them all letters are always welcome. The parents see the 
school with the eyes of adults, prejudiced doubtless in 
favor of their own children, and yet loyal to the schools 
because of their immeasurable helpfulness to children and 
families. The parents are rearing the children for the 
community and for the nation, expecting to get back no 
pecuniary return. The New World parent scorns the idea 
that on the labor of four or five children he can retire 
and live without work. The parent often has valuable 
suggestions to make. Whether mother or father, the 
parent is an influential factor in school politics. 

To illustrate : In the first year of his school superintendency, the 
incumbent received many visits from parents ; in the second year he 
received half as many ; after that he received so few that he finally 
inquired of the chairman of the board what he thought this meant. 
The chairman, who had been in office several years before the super- 
intendent was elected, replied that he, too, had had the same experience 
and was receiving no callers. "In fact, I almost have forgotten that I 
am chairman, except for board meetings." The cessation of calls meant 
two things : the removal of the causes of complaints, and the general 
cessation of revolutionary and misunderstood changes. 

The superintendent should endeavor to meet parents 
in the various neighborhoods at the school parents' meet- 
ings. Hard as it may be upon his general spirits, he 
should expect that, wherever he goes, there he will meet 
persons desirous of talking about school affairs with him. 
He must remember that the sole reason why he is getting 
the public money of the community is that the citizens 

executive or as an instructor, has any right to set before immature boys an example of drink- 
ing and smoking. Not to know this is to argue one's self unfit to serve as a guide for 
youth. The superintendent ought to encourage all outdoor games and all reasonable pas- 
times of the pupils. It is nothing short of sin to make the upper paths of culture seem 
forbidding to school children. 



156 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

desire his services as an educator. They are not support- 
ing him for his own sake. It is somewhat wearing to his 
nervous Hfe to be forced to realize this fact every time he 
goes forth upon the streets, but in the small community 
there is no remedy for it. He can no more escape talk 
about education than the physician can escape talk about 
medicine or the lawyer talk about law. 

The competent school superintendent can secure from every mother 
at least the praise accorded by a certain mother to one such man. She 
had been attending a mothers' club meeting, with a baby in her arms, 
and a child under six on each side. She seemed to be asleep while 
he talked. When he had finished she turned to the largest child, and 
said : "Did you hear that good man ? He talked like a priest. I am 
sure he must be a good man." 

The superintendent ought to be a wise counselor for all 
parents to see regarding the higher education of their sons 
and daughters. A good deal of this advice they will get 
from their pastors and from high school principals and 
teachers. But on many occasions they will need yet more 
light. This the superintendent ought to be able to give; 
and every board of education ought to stand ready to pay 
the superintendent's necessary traveUng expenses to visit 
one or two higher institutions of learning annually, that 
he may keep in touch with educational progress. 

9. The superintendent stands in the relation of profes- 
sional head of the schools, and it is not best that he should 
have anything direct to do with the employment or efficient 
service of the janitors. This duty of oversight belongs 
rather to the principals. 

The employment and the salaries of the several janitors are a chief 
concern of the building committee or, better, of the business manager. At 
the same time, every superintendent should be expected to report extra 
services of janitors, derelictions of duty, incompetence, and impoliteness. 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 1 57 

Any school system in which the janitors are of such importance that they 
do not need to keep the schools clean, do not need to obey the orders 
of the principals, and do not need to be reasonably courteous toward 
teachers and pupils, is sadly topsy-turvy and in need of radical reform. 
It literally requires overturning. Similarly, a system of schools in 
which the janitors give only part time to their duties is a system neces- 
sarily weak in the material care of the schools ; it reflects too much the 
poverty of the poor in the community rather than its wealth considered 
as a whole. When the janitor service is so poor or so poorly paid as to 
endanger the success of the educational work, there the matter vitally 
concerns the superintendent. He can always rely upon the support of 
the janitors in any effort to improve their income. Therefore, he ought 
to insist upon their improving the quality and amount of their service ^ 
when deficient. 

Every regular visit of a school superintendent to a 
schoolhouse should include inspection of the conditions of 
the cellars, furnaces, yards, floors, halls, rooms, attic, roofs. 
A competent man will praise as well as censure. When 
he must always censure, he should report the facts to the 
building committee of the board. 

10. The superintendent of public instruction has rela- 
tions also with certain classes of persons not directly con- 
nected with the schools; namely, taxpayers, politicians, 
citizens, newspaper men, the general community, the State, 
and the nation. 

The tendency in the progress of American poHtical and 
legal institutions has been to make government a matter 
of property. This has been the inevitable tendency of 
every nation and of every civilization. In a peaceful and 
orderly population, property is made secure. It becomes 
the basis of taxation for the support of government, which, 
in consequence, logically tends to encourage its develop- 
ment. The political encouragement of the property- 

1 For a discussion of the qualifications of janitors see Chapter II, " The Board of Edu- 
cation." For salary see Chapter XVI, " Salary, Tenure, and Certificate." 



158 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

holding class and their payment of the costs of government 
logically gives them interest and prominence in govern- 
ment. As a class, the owners of property are stronger 
men, and of firmer wills and more settled habits, than the 
propertyless, — the " proletariat," as they are called in older 
nations. Every taxpayer feels a certain dignity and a 
certain comparative superiority among the citizens. With 
regard to every officeholder, he feels that his money is 
paying the salary. With regard to the schools, he feels 
that they belong to the taxpayers in a peculiar sense 
because public education is supported by their money.^ 
The schools to some of them seem to be the taxpayers' 
charities. In many communities, of the money raised for 
all municipal expenditures, the schools receive from twenty 
to forty per cent.^ 

The special relation of the superintendent to taxpayers 
is to enlighten them upon the principles of the incidence 
of taxation.^ Many of the heavy taxpayers are men who 
live without doing economic work. Such persons are a 
blessing to a community only when, in return for their un- 
earned incomes, they do much for the ethical and aesthetic 
enlightenment of the people, by philanthropic services and 
gifts.* 

* Even in such a State as New Jersey, where the schools are largely supported by State 
taxation of corporations, the local taxpayers regard themselves as the real sources of the 
school funds. 

* Statistics gathered in 1901 from some fifty towns and cities in the northeastern part of the 
United States showed an extreme range from seventeen per cent to forty-five per cent. It 
was noticeable in these statistics : — 

First, that heavy police expenditures go with light school expenditures, and heavy school 
expenditures with light police expenditures. In other words, the best-behaved populations 
spend most upon their schools. 

Second, that communities with heavy general budgets, in proportion to population spend the 
least relatively upon their schools and those with light budgets spend the most. The extreme 
range per capita of school children was $14 to $56, the average for cities being some $40. 
This amount is essentially inadequate. See Chapter XVI, " Salary, Tenure, and Certificate." 

3 See Seligman, " Taxation." 

* See Veblen, " Theory of the Leisure Class." 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 1 59 

Occasionally, taxpayers place themselves in highly inter- 
esting positions by their haughty criticisms of the schools. 

To illustrate : The father of a family of seven children, all in school, 
"ordered "a principal to do a certain service on the ground that he 
paid taxes. On inquiry, it was discovered that his total taxes were 
$40, of which thirty per cent, that is, $12, went to the schools. 
When told that, in return for this sum, he received $225 worth of 
instruction for the children, he withdrew his order! 

Similarly, a factory owner who paid some $300 of school tax seemed 
much surprised when informed that twenty of his employees attended 
evening school annually at a cost of more than I300, and that all were 
learning subjects directly helpful in his line of manufacture. 

The superintendent does well to remember that the move- 
ment for free schools through all sections of our country 
is not yet two generations old. In certain districts the 
idea is still handed down in many families as a sacred 
tradition, that to tax a property owner for the education 
of other men's children is an invasion of his freedom and 
essentially an injustice.^ Even in some fine communities 
here and there an influential man may still cherish this 
ancient notion. 

II. Every school superintendent should be a politi- 
cally minded man, able to deal effectively with all politicians 
by reason of superior insight, courage, and acquaintance 
with the general public. The superintendent has a very 
great advantage. His position is one of prestige. He is 
in office. After a year or two his friends and supporters 
should be well known to him. " Man," said Plato, " is a 
political animal." In a high civilization most of the best 
relations of life are made secure by the laws of the State. 
No sane man would dream of leaving questions concern- 
ing property rights or character and the permanence of 

1 This subject is more fully treated in Chapter XII, " The New Education." 



l6o ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

the marriage relation to social good nature. Yet some 
sane men think that teachers do not need tenure by legis- 
lation. The public school teacher is wholly a political 
creature, getting appointment and salary by law. Let the 
law, therefore, be made complete and perfect. 

In relation to politics two principles will guide the 
superintendent : — 

First: He will not weaken himself by going out of his 
province of the schools to influence the community's gen- 
eral acts. He will have his own opinion and his vote ; he 
need not conceal these ; but the wise man in so great and 
peculiar an office will seldom try to influence others by 
direct appeals. 

Second : He will protect his own province as far as 
possible from the entry of politics. When they do enter, 
he will endeavor to minimize their influence as far as possi- 
ble. He will try to drive them out soon. The school is 
a temple of learning, the shrine of progress. Positive 
philanthropy is its sacred mission. 

To the taxpayer and to the politician the superintendent 
will gladly give all facts that they may be willing to know. 

To illustrate : After the installation of a course in domestic art a 
politician attacked the instruction in cookery, saying, " I hear they are 
teaching dish washing and potato paring at the high school." 

" Right you are, my friend," replied the superintendent. " We have 
introduced the course to supplement the courses in words and worms." 

Mystified, the critic replied, " What courses, did you say ? " 

" Oh, words, that is, language, Uterature, Greek, Latin, French, Ger- 
man ; and worms, that is, biology." 

" Why did you not call them so ? " asked the politician, with some 
anger. 

" Oh," said the superintendent, " I thought you desired plain talk 
along the lines of potato paring. Come up and see what we are 
doing." 

The competent superintendent knows that the politicians will quote 



THE SUPERINTENDENT l6l 

and misquote him. When he does not talk, they will say that he is 
concealing corruption or extravagance or both.^ 

Successful dealing with politicians may be illustrated further. 

In a certain city a newly elected board member, who was a well- 
known local politician, immediately informed the school superintendent 
that he would " block that game," meaning his recommendation of a 
new additional schoolhouse. 

" I must tell you something," said the superintendent. *' I know a 
man on the board with several friends. He is going to support this 
project ; and there is no abler man on the board than he." 

In jealous indignation, the politician replied that he would defeat the 
plan anyway. 

" Oh, no," replied the superintendent, " you cannot defeat this plan. 
You do not yet know what it is." 

" Yes, I do," answered the board member, " and I am not going to 
be frightened out by a teacher." 

" Now, Mr. D ," went on the schoolmaster, " I am going to lay 

before this man to-day every feature of the plan and all the reasons for 
it. When you get to the board meeting, you will not be able to defeat 
him, for he will know all the inside facts and will have the public behind 
him." 

" What are the facts ? I demand to know them, as a board mem- 
ber." Whereupon the superintendent unfolded the entire case. 

Before the politician left, he inquired somewhat anxiously who the 
man was that the superintendent relied upon " to jam the thing through 
without debate." 

" You, of course," repHed the superintendent. 

At the next meeting, the vote for the school building was unanimous. 

As a general rule, politicians are far easier to manage than business 
men. 

After many years of service, the " boss " of the dominant political 
party proposed to drive out the school superintendent for the public 
reason that he " owned " the board, was the " Tsar " of the schools, 
and " gave the people no chance in them " (referring to janitorships) . 
His private reason was that the superintendent had defeated several 
proposed "jobs" in municipal affairs. 

* Extravagant administrations are seldom corrupt. Similarly, corrupt administrations are 
seldom extravagant. Only clean men in office dare to attract much attention to themselves. 
Unfortunately, from this general principle, we should perhaps except at least one great State 
in the Union, and its greatest city. 



1 62 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

The two men met in a large room, the reporters' room of a local 
newspaper. There happened to be present the editor, several council- 
men, reporters, two officeholders, and others, for there was consider- 
able excitement at the time in local politics. 

" Your time has come," said the chairman of the party's local com- 
mittee. " You've managed S , and K , and G (board officers 

and members of much prominence) long enough. We're going to cut 
the school appropriation $20,000 and do away with the superintend- 
ency." Then he laughed ; and his supporters were happy. 

" You have cut out a large contract," said the superintendent. " You 

must convert S , and K , and G for a starter ; or else their 

successors. Then you must also convert the general public." 

"Oh! that's all fixed," the boss answered jovially. "I'm going on 
the board myself from Ward Four. I'll get the public behind me. I'll 
tell them you're too smart a man for the place: You're dangerous. 
Why, you've hypnotized^ G , the smartest native here." 

"I never heard that he was smarter than yourself," put in the 
superintendent. 

" Oh, yes, he is." 

" Well," said the superintendent, " if I've converted the ablest man 
in D , I'll convert you within three months." 

"How?" 

" By facts." 

The " boss " was not allowed by his friends to run ; and the superin- 
tendent had one old friend stronger than ever and a new friend also, 
both influenced by the public compliments and by the courage. 

12. In relation to newspaper men, the local school 
superintendent ought to be friendly but judicious. The 
" knights of the pencil " live by " column rates " and by 
" scoops." The more news they get and the sooner they 
get the news, the more money they earn. As a general 
principle, the more the public knows of the public schools 
through the medium of the superintendent's office, the 
better. To the older newspaper men, the editors, the men 

^ This charge, now so frequently and generally applied to men with strong powers of per- 
suasion, is a modern revival of the old superstitions of sorcery and witchcraft. A certain New 
England superintendent once said, " To make it is an admission of ignorance and weakness. 
To tolerate it is a regrettable necessity." 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 1 63 

with families, the school superintendent who is wise will 
be especially friendly. They are men of intelligence, of 
responsibility, and of no little power.^ To them may be 
communicated by letter or in person whatever the school 
superintendent desires to have widely known. 

Among the matters that may well be published in local 
newspapers are the following, namely : — 

I. Financial statements. 

II. Attendance statistics. 

III. Appointments, promotions, and transfers of teachers. 

IV. The board's regular monthly public business. 

V. The sessions of the board of examiners. 
' VI. Athletics. 

VII. Changes in courses of study. 

VIII. Changes in rules and regulations. 

IX. Public meetings at schools; school entertainments; parents' 
meetings ; mothers' clubs. 

X. Addresses given by distinguished visitors. 

XI. Public addresses given by supervisors, principals, and others 
officially connected with the schools. 

XII. Certain parts of the superintendent's monthly reports (all per- 
sonalities eliminated) . 

XIII. The tentative plans regarding which the board or superin- 
tendent desires to sound the opinion of the public. 

XIV. Plans and specifications for new buildings. 

In the event of a public attack upon the schools by the 
newspapers, there are several courses to pursue : — 

First, the familiar policy of ** dignified silence." This4s 
wise when the facts are obviously against the newspapers 
and when the public really knows the facts. 

Second, an immediate visit to the newspaper office or 
offices, followed by a communication to be published in 
the form of an " Open Letter." 

* The educative influence of the public press through a period of years is incalculably great, 
while its power in a single campaign is usually slight. The general support of the schools by 
the press is far more important than the occasional advocacy of particular measures, 



l64 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Third, securing the assistance of board members and 
other friends of the schools to make such visits and to 
write such letters. 

Fourth, in extreme cases, calling a public meeting in a 
schoolhouse to discuss the matter. 

Fifth, in such cases, sending out a circular letter to 
parents and citizens. 

It is a sound principle not to resign because of a public 
or a private attack, unless the resignation was long since 
due, for incompetence or other unfitness.^ To resign is to 
throw one's reputation and character into the arena. The 
man who does not resign keeps a wall at his back. Resig- 
nations are apt to be interpreted as weakness. 

13. The superintendent takes the whole community for 
his parish.2 He ought to feel a personal solicitude for its 
welfare in all respects, and a professional responsibility 
for its progress in culture. This solicitude should concern 
both the community as a whole and every individual in it. 
If there is to be any difference in his consideration for 
those who come within the range of his knowledge and 
acquaintance, he will give especial attention to the humble, 
the poor, the sinful, the ignorant. This is politically wise 
as well as ethically right. 

To illustrate : A superintendent coming into his office for afternoon 
hours found a practicing physician, a rich man, and a washerwoman 
waiting to see him. He called the physician first because of the rights of 
sick patients. Then he called " Next." The rich man did not rise because 
he was third ; nor did the washerwoman because she was afraid. Seeing 
the fact, he called her, whereupon the rich man rose and departed. The 
man of means came again next day and thanked him for his impar- 
tiality, and the laboring people of the city tell the incident to this day.^ 

* For the principle governing resignations, see Appendix XII. 

2 See Chapter XIII, " The Educational Policy of the Community," where this subject is 
fully treated. 

3 One of those " pests," the anonymous letter writers, in an offensive letter put the case 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 165 

To all the citizens the superintendent is always acces- 
sible during his office hours so far as his work may permit. 
His office hours mean that he intends to keep at least that 
much time open to them. As a public servant, he is ready 
to see any citizen or business caller at any reasonable 
hour of any week day of the year. A man thus accessible 
is less likely to be annoyed by unnecessary callers upon 
trivial business than the distant and inaccessible man ; a 
quick courtesy even in refusal often saves many a long 
controversy. 

14. The superintendent lives not only in the conscious 
presence of the community, but in the presence also of 
the whole country. He takes pride in the fact that the 
graduates of his schools go east, west, south, and north, 
to do patriotic service in State and Nation. He desires 
to take pride also in the progress of the State of which 
he is a resident and possibly a native. 

So great is the mobility of the American people to-day that a very 
large proportion of the superintendents in the larger communities are 
imported. Few educators serve in the State of their birth, and still 
fewer in their native community. It is a great advantage to a man to 
go in his maturity to scenes remote from his childhood.^ 

15. The superintendent has a certain relation to former 
board members, especially to those who during their term 
of office were strong supporters of his policy. He owes 
to them remembrance and should send to them from time 
to time reports and news that are likely to interest them, 
especially reports of matters for which they worked, but 

in this language : " You cater to the Catholics and the Jews. You associate with laborers. 
You don't know a gentleman when you see him. You arc losing all your friends because you 
are always playing politics." This was some years ago. The superintendent is still ia office 
there, at a higher salary than ever. 

1 This matter is discussed fully in Chapter XVI, " Salary, Tenure, and Certificate/* 



l66 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

whose full realization perhaps they did not remain long 
enough on the board to see. He should also invite them 
to school functions and occasionally call upon them all, 
whether friends or opponents. He should sometimes see 
them to ask for support of special measures and some- 
times for a general conference. 

1 6. The relation of the superintendent to " reformers ** 
is sometimes one of peculiar difficulty. A progressive 
school superintendent is himself a good deal of a "re- 
former." Education is the American gospel of individual 
and social salvation. The " reformers " are sometimes on 
the board. Often the cry of " reform " (which may be a 
cry for economy by reaction and retrogression) is the 
means by which a board member has secured his election. 
His relations become peculiarly difficult when the "re- 
formers " desire to modify the curriculum so as to intro- 
duce instruction along the line of their " reforms." Usually, 
however, the " reformers " simply wish to secure one more 
enthusiast for their cause. 

The entire duty of the superintendent in relation to " reformers " of 
this type is to treat them as members of a board for education, that is, 
to try to reform them. Of other reformers, their kinds are numerous. 
There are tax reformers, advocating the " single tax " on land, inheri- 
tance taxes, corporation taxes, the " unit of value " tax, or the income tax. 
There are temperance reformers, attacking saloons, licenses, cigarettes, 
morphine habits. There are social purity reformers. There are " equal 
suffrage" enthusiasts, who believe in equal rights of women with 
men. 

There are educational reformers who believe in revolutionizing the 
schools at once. These enthusiasts read the ladies' monthly periodicals — 
and think that the schools ruin the health of children by discovering that 
their eyes are astigmatic, or farsighted, or esophoric, that their spines 
have curvatures, or that they are deaf in one or both ears. Or they 
think that the schools ought to educate only so far ; that is, so far as 
they themselves were educated. 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 167 

There are socialists, cooperators, philosophical anarchists, national- 
ists. There are spiritualists, Christian scientists, mind readers, mental 
healers. There are "direct legislation," initiative, and referendum 
apostles : " Populists," " Free Silverites," " Greenbackers," " Jack- 
sonian" or " JefFersonian " Democrats. There are antipapists, strong 
denominationalists, sectarians. There are tenement house reformers, 
university settlement people, slum students, sociological investigators. 

Most of these persons are sincere, many of them are right, all of them 
flatter the educator by saying that they know that he has an open mind. 
Therefore, they throw down upon him their load of heavy ideas. Pos- 
sessing almost infinite good nature, the successful school superintendent 
receives their messages and goes on to render his own service in his 
own way. He certainly never argues with them. Society needs more 
of some of them, as centers of beneficial moral contagion. Many of 
them hate disease, ignorance, poverty, selfishness, privilege, superstition, 
as the heavy handicaps upon the race of man. The superintendent 
seldom gives them money, for almost the only money he cares to give 
away, he gives to deserving boys and girls who are seeking by their 
own efforts to secure the higher education.^ 

17. The superintendent has relations with various men 
who work for the schools, — architects, masons, carpenters, 
painters, text-book agents, library book agents, fire extin- 
guisher agents, etc. 

The architect should be the close adviser of the school 
superintendent. To him is given the opportunity of rais- 
ing the standard of all future schoolhouses by building a 
new model building.^ The school superintendent ought to 
endeavor to get ample funds for every new building so as 
not to cramp the architect's genius. When a building 
is to be erected by competition among architects and 

* The greatest modern need to-day in philanthropy is of more and better colleges for 
women and especially of funds to help enterprising poor girls through college. Backward 
as many men's colleges are in methods of instruction, women's colleges are generally much 
worse. Hard as it is for boys to work their way through college (it is easier now than it 
used to be), it is ten times harder for girls to do so. This is the best of the familiar argu- 
ments for a State university in every State. 

« See Chapter VIII, " The Graded Public School." 



l68 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

builders, the superintendent should see that his ideas are 
carried out by every competitor. If a board of educa- 
tion is willing to listen to a superintendent's advice regard- 
ing the care of the children's immortal souls, it certainly 
should be wilHng to consider his advice about the care of 
their mortal bodies. 

For a superintendent not to care to get new schools 
upon ample grounds, of artistic architecture, commodious 
inside, and arranged and equipped for modern school 
work, is for him to shirk one of his most important duties. 

Toward all builders the school superintendent's attitude 
should be that of the business man who intends to get 
value for money paid, and who desires to deal fairly with 
all honest men. In a large sense, the superintendent is 
an inspector of buildings and repairs, and is in the employ 
of the board for that purpose especially. Neither fear 
nor favor should sit between his eyes in respect to 
contractors. 

Regarding text-book agents, the superintendent should 
welcome their coming and speed their going. Let him 
get from them in as short time as possible the good 
points of their books. Let them tell him the important 
school news. Let him be known as a man who always 
means to take the " best books." And let him be exceed- 
ingly careful to benefit in no way by their transactions 
with the board of education.^ 



* It is a nice question in ethics whether a school superintendent is ever justified in accept- 
ing a book agent's invitation to luncheon or dinner. He must necessarily decline — 

1. When the adoption of a text-book is pending. 

2. Just after the adoption of a text-book. 

The safe rule is never to accept meals or anything else whatever except free copies of 
books for examination with a view to use. Whether these books belong to the city or to the 
superintendent is another nice question. Most publishers prefer to have the books kept in the 
superintendent's office for the examination of teachers, and left there when the superintendent 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 1 69 

18. The superintendent has obligations to all other 
superintendents who may call upon him for information 
regarding teachers and others. He may be tempted to 
speak or to write more favorably than his own judgment 
really warrants. This temptation to be kind to an indi- 
vidual at the expense of others must be resisted. The 
superintendent must remember that he will be judged by 
his own judgment of others. Soon, one who has helped 
everybody will be able to help nobody. In taking the 
opinions of others regarding teachers, it is well to remem- 
ber that censure by some is really praise. 

19. The superintendent in relation to teachers* meetings 
is a large topic of vital importance. How many shall he 
hold? Upon what subjects.^ Of what kinds? 

The following is a suggestion : — 

I. A general teachers' meeting at the beginning of or 
early in the school year. 

II. A second general teachers* meeting in the winter. 

III. Various professional seminars, with groups of vol- 
untary educational students, from twelve to twenty-five in 
each seminar. 

goes elsewhere. Other publishers prefer to have the superintendent keep the books at his 
own home and take them with him wherever he goes. In view of the thousands of books 
now published, the question involves many hundreds of dollars in every large city. As to 
giving recommendations for text-books the ethics are clear. Every educator owes it to the 
profession to praise good books and to condemn poor ones. 

The leading man of culture in a community ought to be very loth to write recommenda- 
tions of any books that he himself does not like well enough to buy. Further, a recommen- 
dation of a book is often misconstrued. 

To illustrate : A certain generous superintendent wrote a letter praising a certain sub- 
scription work. The agent took the letter about the city and told ignorant parents that 
unless they bought the work for their children, the children would lose their promotions at 
school. In one ward seventy sets were thus sold. In fifty cases the superintendent com- 
pelled the publishers to release the purchasers from the contracts, since they were secured 
under " false pretenses." 

" Do not sign your name to any paper " is a good rule of action for all school superin- 
tendents. Let every actual case be an exception. " Do not buy subscription books " is 
another safe rule. In most cases within a year or two they are for sale in secondhand book- 
stores at half price or less. 



I/O ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Of these, the superintendent should be the leader. Of 
other meetings, he should be an adviser. 

At the first general teachers* meeting, the superintendent 
will discuss general matters, — the course of study, the re- 
lation of grammar and high schools, the profession and its 
interests, discipline, rules and regulations, compulsory edu- 
cation, the plans for the circles or seminars, the relations 
of teachers to supervisors and principals, the educational 
characteristics of the community. The superintendent 
will consider such of these from year to year as seem 
most important. 

At the second general meeting, he will take up usually 
matters of accomplishment, ideals, particular subjects of 
the curriculum. 

The main purpose of these general meetings is to bring 
the teachers together. Where a reception afterwards can 
be arranged, something of the nature of an "afternoon 
tea," and when a board member is willing to be present 
and to talk briefly, it is so much the better. 

I call the superintendent's ** circles " or " seminars " the 
mainsprings of educational progress. 

The circle is conducted upon a plan like this : — 

The superintendent is the leader and outlines the course for discus- 
sion for all the meetings of the season, that is, from ten to twenty ses- 
sions during the school year, avoiding any sessions in May or June, the 
annual period of greatest fatigue and the period for measuring the 
results of the efforts of the children. 

To each member of the circle a special topic is assigned, for a twenty 
or thirty minute paper. Each discusses the argument of his paper with 
the leader before writing it out, and submits it for criticism a day or two 
before reading it. In the circle, it is read and discussed by all present. 
The leader then reviews the argument of the course to date and perhaps 
anticipates the next topic to be discussed. The papers are filed for 
later reference ; at the end of the season an outline of the ground cov- 
ered may be printed. 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 171 

In this way may be taken up such subjects as — 

1 . Habit in Education, 

2. Method of School Discipline, 

3. Special Schools, 

4. History of Educational Theory, 

5. History of High Schools or Grammar Schools, 

6. Pedagogical Literature, 

7. Children's Games, Individual and Social. 

Care must be taken that the subject be broad enough to offer enough 
definite topics for the consideration of the various members. When it 
proves too broad for a single year, it may be continued a year or more 
longer. 

The " seminar " is conducted in an essentially different manner. In 
this each member of the seminar reports weekly upon the topic that he 
has selected for the season. As far as possible, all the members work 
upon the same class of topics. Each member begins with a thesis and 
an outline of the points that he intends to investigate and discuss. 

There may be several seminars or seminars and circles in the same 
season. The fact that the sessions should not last over one hour 
necessarily limits the number of members of a seminar to a dozen or 
fifteen so that each person may report at each session. 

The seminar may be in — 

1. Psychology, 

2. Pedagogy, 

3. Philosophy, 

4. History, 

5. English Literature, or American, or Comparative Modern, 

6. Economics, 

7. Child Study. 

To illustrate : The twelve students in a seminar for the investigation 
of philosophy of method may take such subjects as these : — 

I. Philosophy of Method in Mathematics. Illustrative thesis. 
In elementary schools general elementary mathematics rather than 
arithmetic, geometry, and algebra, the specialized subjects ought to be 
studied. 

II. Philosophy of Method in Nature Study. Three theses. 
(i) Nature study may be made the basis of geography and (2) of 
natural science and (3) may be carried on partly by a collateral course 
with English conversation and composition, and with art. 



172 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

III. Philosophy of Method in Language. First thesis. Language 
study should begin only when the pupil is able to understand the logic 
of technical grammar. Second thesis. Knowledge of grammar is 
unimportant in the development of facility in expression. 

By theses such as the above, all the studies of the curriculum may 
be reviewed philosophically. 

Or to illustrate again : The fifteen students in a seminar for child 
study may take up, under the general subject. The Six-to-Nine Year Old 
Child, fifteen topics, such as these : — 

I. Lies. IX. Truants and Runaways. 

II. Dramatics. X. Love of Woods and Streams. 

III. Dreams. XI. Earliest Drawings. 

IV. Ideas of God. XII. Stories Preferred. 

V. Ideas of Home. XIII. Preference of Studies. 

VI. Age at Entering School. XIV. Ideas of Teacher. 

VII. Sense of Honor. XV. Anger. 

VIII. Fear of Adults. XVI. Aspirations. 

These seminars and circles require good school reference libraries.^ 
Pursued steadily for a few years by a fairly permanent staff of teachers, 
the work of the seminars results in carrying the teacher far beyond the 
knowledge of any normal school or any college instruction in pedagogy. 
Teachers in such systems as foster postgraduate study and constant 
professional progress learn to diagnose their children's minds as skill- 
fully as physicians diagnose their bodily conditions. 

The work of the seminars takes time ; but it saves time also, because 
it saves costly errors that consume time. Not many years will pass 
before all progressive communities will require as superintendent men 
of such broad scholarship that they will carry forward this kind of edu- 
cational work easily and enthusiastically. 

The reading circle with its conferences upon pedagog- 
ical, current, and general literature is also valuable. The 
superintendent of long service in a single community will 
perhaps alternate two years of seminars or circles with a 
year of reading circles.^ 

* See Appendix III. 

2 The question of the teachers' out-of-school professional work is further discussed in 
Chapter XI, " The Teacher as Administrator and Supervisor." 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 1 73 

The superintendent who feels or fears that his community 
regards him as a failure often can revolutionize himself and 
the general public opinion of himself by wise and energetic 
reorganization of his teachers' meetings. 

The specific duties to be performed and the particular 
records ^ to be kept by a school superintendent may be 
enumerated briefly as follows, viz. : — 

I. Attendance at board meetings. 

II. Attendance at committee meetings. 

III. Preparing reports for the above and filing dupli- 
cates for record. 

IV. Visiting : schools, classes, morning assemblies, 
special entertainments. 

V. Calling upon board members, city officials, school 
officials of the State. 

VI. Visiting: State normal schools, colleges to which 
high school graduates go, colleges that prepare teachers ; 
and reports thereon to boards. 

VII. Receiving visits from out-of-city educators, board 
members, etc. 

VIII. Hearing complaints from parents and pupils. 

IX. Keeping records ^ of — 

1 . Attendance, 

2. Truancies, 

3. Pupils reported to office for discipline, 

4. Expulsions, 

5. Library books, 

6. Class text-books, 

7. Apparatus of value, 

8. Seating of schools. 

1 These records may be kept either in ledgers or in card catalogues. The amount of 
detail in the records must depend partly upon the number and competence of the clerks 
in the superintendent's office. In small schools, riiany minor matters may safely be in- 
trusted to memory. 

2 These are duplicates of the records kept in the separate schools. 



174 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

X. Keeping an official diary. ^ 
XL Disposing of correspondence. 

XII. Interviewing and visiting candidates. 

XIII. Consulting with board of examiners. 

XIV. Talking at school assemblies and elsewhere as the 
official head of the schools. 

XV. Informing one's self thoroughly as to latest ad- 
vances in school architecture, hygiene, sanitation, ventila- 
tion, lighting, heating, courses of study, text-books, scientific 
apparatus, college requirements, new educational methods 
and devices. 

XVI. Attending teachers* meetings, educational associa- 
tions, citizens' meetings, etc. 

XVII. Holding teachers' meetings, and arranging 
others. 

XVIII. Consulting with individuals, principals, super- 
visors, and teachers. 

XIX. Dealing with suspended and expelled pupils, tru- 
ants, habitual absentees, advising with the officers of the 
law upon misdemeanors of school children, etc. 

XX. Organizing, or helping to organize, neighborhood 
or parents' associations, exhibits of school work, gradua- 
tion exercises, school entertainments. 

Even the best of school superintendents does well occa- 
sionally to examine himself to see whether he is not over- 
emphasizing some features of the superintendency and 
neglecting others. 

Sometimes the estimable qualities of a school superintend- 

1 At a time of reelection, a certain superintendent was violently attacked by several board 
members who alleged that he seldom visited schools, and that when he did go to schools, he 
never visited class rooms. His diary was accepted by a majority of the board and showed the 
contrary conclusively. Another advantage of a diary is that it gives specific data for years 
back relating to unsatisfactory teachers, etc. Personal items do not belong in this official 
diary. 



THE SUPERINTENDENT 1 75 

ent prevent him from dealing properly with school affairs. 
Some of the best men are apt to have affection for their 
official associates and like to hold in esteem their official 
superiors. When a board of education is composed almost 
wholly of mediocre men, these qualities of affection greatly 
weaken the efficiency of the school superintendent. 

Of course, it is true that sometimes the tradesman with a small store 
is superior to his business. Yet it is commonly true that the extent of 
a man's horizon and the nature of one's vision of life are fairly repre- 
sented by his occupation. No doubt, the exceptions are the very men 
who seem apt to get positions in public ofSce. However, all things 
considered, a school superintendent who takes great care not to withhold 
plans of progress because of too great tenderness and too decided 
courtesy toward board members is undoubtedly the most useful man to 
his community. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PRINCIPALSHIP 

In almost every aspect except that of salary, the princi- 
palship of a school is the most desirable of all educational 
positions, unless one desires to pursue in a professorship 
some particular line of study. In salary, the principals 
of a community generally receive less than the superin- 
tendent, though quite as much as many college professors ; 
at the same time, their professional expenses are less than 
the expenses of either superintendent or professor. 

The excellent features of a principalship are as follows : — 

1. By custom, the principal has usually a life tenure as good as, 
often better than, that of a college professor. 

2. The principal has a definite line of duties, confined to a building 
with or without branches. He can regulate his day's work far better 
than the superintendent can. 

3. The principal is one step removed from the political activities 
of the board of education. Wind and wave reach only the surface 
waters of the ocean. 

4. The principal has free evenings and holidays, in the sense that he 
has few imperative professional engagements, such as board and com- 
mittee meetings. He may, therefore, employ some of his evenings for 
professional study and investigation. 

5. The principal has a definite school clientele, knows the children 
of his building, sees teachers daily, has time to consider parents' ideas, 
can make and keep close friends ; and becomes often the pattern-saint 
of his neighborhood, sometimes the patron-saint also. 

6. The principal can serve up to, even into, old age. The daily 
drain on his strength and nervous life is less than that of either teacher 
or superintendent. His school day is longer than that of the teacher, 
but he is less apt to have much home work. His burden is that of a 

176 



THE PRINCIPALSHIP 1 77 

continuing heavy and somewhat monotonous responsibility in relation 
both to teachers and to pupils. 

7. His social position is as good as, and often better than, that of 
the superintendent, because he can give some of his evenings to social 
calls, because he stays longer in one community, and because he is not 
usually suspected of being active in politics.^ 

Principalships may be classified under two different 
heads : supervising and teaching principalships ; and prin- 
cipalships of high schools and of elementary schools. For 
convenience they may be considered in order as follows, 

namely : — 

I. Supervising high school principalships. 
II. Teaching high school principalships. 

III. Supervising elementary school principalships. 

IV. Teaching elementary school principalships. 

The general subjects of the principles of administration and super- 
vision have already been considered at some length.^ 

Many of the suggestions for the conduct of the special office of the 
superintendency apply equally well to principalships.^ Further, the 
number of positions of Class I is relatively small in communities of from 
three to fifty thousand people, for which this book is especially in- 
tended. And in such cities the number even of positions of Class III 
is not large. Believing that the progress of American free common 
education is seriously retarded by reason of inadequate supervision, 
I present here the argument for more supervising principalships, as 
well as an exposition of the principals' special duties. 

The point at which every principal-teacher should be 
relieved of part of his teaching duties by the assistance of 
a special teacher for his class room is when the school 
assumes its fifth or at most its sixth teacher. This is 

1 The traveler De Tocqueville, the historian Freeman, and the historian-jurist Bryce, 
each and all comment upon the fact that to be in politics in America is to be in a half-light 
of disgrace. In England and France, the scholars and rich men hold politics and political 
office in the highest esteem. Their wives and daughters regard politics as adding luster to 
the family name. Too often school superintendents are suspected of " being in politics." 

2 See Chapters III and IV. s See Chapter V. 



178 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

equally true of high and of grammar schools. The com- 
plexity of the one, and the increased age of its pupils, 
make up for the larger number of pupils in the other. 

The point at which the principal-teacher with a special 
assistant in his grade ought to become solely a supervising 
principal cannot be located within narrow limits ; it may 
be when eight or nine teachers are employed, and it may 
not be until sixteen are employed. 

A supervising principal is needed in the small school, — 

1. When most of the teachers are young and inexperienced ; 

2. When several of them are incompetent ; 

3. When the general quality of the pupils is high or low, and they 
are poor either in their conduct or in their studies, or in both ; 

4. When the parents are very actively interested in the school and 
are frequent visitors ; 

5. When many changes in the; course of study are in process of 
realization ; 

6. When the community and the board of education desire the best 
possible schools. 

The appointment of a supervising principal may be delayed until the 
school is large, — 

1. When all the teachers are mature and experienced ; 

2. When none of them are incompetent ; 

3. When the pupils are both orderly and intelligent ; 

4. When the parents are inclined to leave the school affairs wholly 
to the teachers. 

5. When the course of study is not undergoing considerable changes ; 

6. When the community and board do not care to pay for the best 
possible schools. 

The argument for supervising principals has been stated 
generally.^ Its practical applications are implied in the 
discussion above as to what schools need supervising prin- 
cipals. The reasons may be given now seriatim and ex- 
plicitly. 

1 See Chapter IV, " Supervision." 



THE PRINCIPALSHIP 1 79 

1. Because the more teachers the children have, the 
better. To give a school a supervising principal is to give 
each child two teachers, a class teacher and a consulting 
teacher. Many an injustice that otherwise would never be 
known is thereby avoided or remedied. When the class 
teacher is the sole arbiter, the child has no appeal. The 
class room tyrant is supreme in the school that has no 
supervising principal. A teaching principal is too busy 
with his own class to attend to details in other rooms. 

2. Because when a supervising principal is employed, 
he invariably receives a higher salary than any class teacher 
has had, and therefore in almost every instance the school 
gains a better teacher than it ever had before. To raise 
the grade of a school, add better teachers of any and all 
kinds than it has and discharge the poorest, replacing 
them with the best. 

3. Because by daily prolonged class visits, when neces- 
sary, the supervising principal can make almost every poor 
teacher into a good one. 

In normal schools, the apprentices get at most but a few hours' 
practice daily for not more than a year. In a regular school, the 
teacher gets a full day's experience for year after year. With compe- 
tent criticism good results are certain to follow. 

To illustrate : In a certain school system, a certain ambitious teacher 
had been rated poor for several years. In the absence of a superin- 
tendent for the schools, no teachers were ever discharged. The in- 
stallation of a supervisory force there was followed by the discharge of 
several hopelessly poor teachers without ambition. This particular 
teacher, after five years more of experience, these five under criticism, 
became a good teacher. 

In other words, a good supervising principal can make 
a good school out of inferior teachers. As between 
schools with good teachers and no principals, and schools 
with poor teachers and new, good principals, the race for 



i8o 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



comparative excellence will be short indeed. Within two 
years, the latter will easily and decidedly surpass the former. 

4. Because a supervising principal can adjust nearly 
every case of misunderstanding between teachers and 
parents. He creates harmony and maintains cooperation. 

5. In a large school without a supervising principal, 
the class of the principal-teacher cannot make good prog- 
ress because of interruptions of his instruction, and because 
his time before and after school is given, not to prepara- 
tion of instruction for the next day, but to general school 
matters. Therefore, in justice to the class, a principal 
without teacher's duties or with a special assistant should 
be employed in every school of considerable size. 

6. The financial reasons are all for the appointment of 
a head for the school.^ 



Two Supposed Cases 

An appropriation of $8000 annually for the teachers' salaries in a 
grammar school of five hundred pupils. Average annual per capita 
enrollment cost for regular instruction only, $16. 



I 

Without a Principal 
15 teachers, 33 pupils per class 



II 

With a Principal 
12 teachers, 42 pupils per class 



teacher. 




teacher; total 13. 




I principal-teacher 


$1,600 


I supervising principal 


$2,300 


I teacher 


900 


I teacher 


900 


3 teachers at $750 


2,250 


4 teachers at $750 


3,000 


4 teachers at $650 


2,600 


6 teachers at $650 


3>9oo 


4 teachers at $600 


2,400 


I teacher at $600 


600 


2 teachers at $500 


1,000 


13 


$10,000 


15 


$10,700 






Average salary per class 




Average salary per class 




teacher 


$650 


teacher 


$700 


Per teacher 


713 


Per teacher 


823 



1 All managers of labor understand the principle well. Six men will do more work when 
one directs and watches the other five than when all six work without a head. 



THE PRINCIPALSHIP l8l 

Whether the principal of a large school should do any 
regular teaching is a debatable question ; but whether he 
should do occasional teaching is not debatable. He should 
do some teaching, by way of example to others and to keep 
himself in practice. A few periods of instruction given by 
a competent principal each week keep him in close contact 
with the school's actual condition, interest and please 
the students, and are an inspiration to the class teachers. 
Except in the very largest city schools, where the principal 
is virtually a superintendent of elementary or high school 
classes, with fifty, eighty, a hundred and twenty classes, it 
may be, to supervise, boards of education and superintend- 
ents do well to require actual teaching by the principals. 
This keeps the principals in sympathy with the work of 
the teachers. Such regular teaching is especially desirable 
in the highest grades of schools in which no men are em- 
ployed except as principals. Every boy and girl ought to 
have had some instruction by men before graduation from 
grammar schools. 

The time so employed should be less in large schools than in small, 
and less in schools with young or generally poor teachers than in 
schools with excellent teachers. It may vary from a half hour to two 
hours a day, at the most, and be with or without a program assign- 
ment. Good principals usually teach too many periods rather than too 
few. But few principals are good enough teachers to take a class even 
for a half hour without some immediately previous preparation, such as 
a program suggests. This program should not be too absolutely fixed. 

The much-debated question whether men or women 
make the best principals may now be considered in the 
light of the foregoing discussion. It may be taken theo- 
retically or practically. 

Theoretically, most men are far better administrators 
than women of equal education and experience. They 



1 82 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

deal with affairs more broadly and more rapidly, and are 
far less influenced by details and personalities. Practically, 
men of executive ability are drawn away from teaching by 
the vastly greater financial and other rewards of business 
and the professions. Women are drawn away from teach- 
ing by marriage only, which in general secures the best- 
appearing and kindest-hearted women with the *most 
pleasing manners, qualities by no means synonymous with 
executive ability. 

Theoretically, as supervisors, men are better than women 
in respect to large interests, and worse in respect to close 
attention to minor details. Practically, at similar salaries 
the women who become supervisors are the best of their 
sex and compete with men who, as an average, are not 
equal to the best of their sex. 

Theoretically, as representatives of the school, dealing 
with parents and the general public, the men command the 
larger respect and make the greater successes. Practi- 
cally, many of them do not compare favorably with the best 
women. 

Consequently, the decision narrows down to the questions 
of money and of the size of the school. 

In this present decade of the twentieth century, in the 
smaller school systems with from one to ten thousand chil- 
dren, principalships carry salaries of from six hundred 
to twenty-five hundred dollars a year. Few high school 
principalships pay more. As salaries run and as candi- 
dates appear, the woman who commands one thousand 
dollars is more valuable to a school system than the man 
who commands not over fifteen hundred dollars ; and the 
woman worth fifteen hundred or eighteen hundred dollars 
is capable of fully as good service as the man worth only 
a few hundred dollars more ; but for the highest salaries. 



THE PRINCIPALSHIP 1 83 

such as are paid in the large cities where many principals 
are almost superintendents, few sufficiently competent 
women have yet appeared. 

Even these loosely defined conclusions must be limited. 
For principalships in high schools, the man is to be pre- 
ferred, provided a sufficient salary can be secured. This 
is especially true when a teaching principalship is vacant. 
Such is the man's superior executive gift, that he can 
do the administrator's work before and after school and 
between recitation periods. Cares of this sort worry most 
women. Since the teaching principal cannot supervise, 
for no one can do two things at the same time (despite 
the opinion of many short-sighted because parsimonious 
boards of education), a woman is out of place in a teaching 
principalship ; her best service cannot be rendered there. 

For principalships of elementary schools, the preference 
falls slightly to women while they are comparatively 
young and still have the maternal instinct toward children. 
Women principals, well advanced in years, who have never 
known family cares, are apt to be rather harder than men 
in their discipline. It is a well-known fact that most 
women prefer to teach under male principals, finding them 
more just, patient, and sympathetic. 

The final conclusion is that as fast as possible salaries 
large enough to command the services of competent men 
must be secured. The feminization of the schools has 
gone altogether too far.^ The pauperization also has 
gone altogether too far. Cheap schools cannot be good 
schools.^ 

The chief differences between the high and the elemen- 
tary school principalships grow out of the difference in 

* See Chapter VHI, " The Graded Public School," for a discussion of men and women 
as teachers. 2 See Chapter XVI, " Salary, Tenure, and Certificate." 



1 84 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

age of the pupils, out of the selected quality of the older 
pupils in the higher school, and out of the fact that the 
elementary school has a much greater range in age than 
the high school. 

Practically, in our country to-day the education of boys 
and girls of from seven to fourteen years of age is univer- 
sal. All children of those ages, whether native or foreign 
born, rich or poor, go to school. Nearly all of them are 
in the first five of the eight or nine grades of the elemen- 
tary school. The children older than the average in the 
lower grades are the ones who do not complete even the 
grammar school education. After the average age of thir- 
teen is reached, the expectation is that from fifteen to 
thirty per cent of the pupils will drop out of school every 
year.^ 

Apparently, the difference in range of activity between 
the grammar school principalship and the high school 
principalship is greatly in favor of the former. In real- 
ity, the latter has greatly the wider range of duties and 
opportunities. 

Nine years intervene between the five-year-old kinder- 
garten child and the fourteen-year-old last year grammar 
grade child. It is a long stretch, and the change in physi- 
cal size is very great. Four years intervene in the stand- 
ard high school course.^ It is a short stretch of years, 
yet the nature of the physical change is very significant. 
As for the mental change, it is indeed as great in the high 
school as in the grammar school. Further, in the case of 
coeducational schools, a great differentiation in mind and 
spirit has taken place in the high school. Finally, long as 

1 See Appendix I. 

* The five-year high school course following an eight-year elementary school course — 
kindergarten, primary, and grammar — is likely soon to be the standard. 



THE PRINCIPALSHIP 



I8S 



is the elementary school course, it is always narrow, and it 
always will be narrow, compared with the high school 
course. The subjects of the course that occupy the mind 
of the grammar school principal are fewer, the difficulty 
of teaching them well consists partly in their being too 
easy for adult minds to enjoy when once thoroughly 
mastered, and they are closely restricted to their elements. 
The subjects of the modern high school are many; some 
of them are difficult even for adults, and some of them 
are taught with considerable detail. A comparison illus- 
trates these differences in subject-matter: — 



Grammar School 


High School (or Academy) 


Language. 


Languages. 


Reading. 


Rhetoric. 


Grammar. 


Composition. 




Declamation. 


English. 


English. 


Spelling. 


Debates and Orations. 


Composition. 


Literature. 


Declamation. 


Shorthand. 


German (elementary). 


Typewriting. 


Latin (elementary). 


German. 




Grammar. 




Literature. 




French. 




Grammar. 




Literature. 




Latin. 




Grammar. 




Literature. 




Greek. 




Grammar. 




Literature. 



1 86 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



Grammar School 


High School (or Academy) 


Mathematics. 


Mathematics. 


Arithmetic. 


Algebra (completed). 


Algebra (elementary). 


Geometry (Plane and Solid). 


Inventional Geometry. 


Trigonometry. 


Bookkeeping. 


Commercial Arithmetic. 




Business Practice. 


Nature Study. 


Sciences. 


Sciences (elementary). 


Physical Geography. 


Physiology and Hygiene. 


Botany. 




Zoology. 




Biology. 




Physiology. 




Physics. 




Geology. 




Chemistry. 




Astronomy. 


Geography (general). 


Geography (Commercial). 




Political Economy. 




Theory of Commerce. 




Commercial Law. 


U. S. History and 


History. 


Civil Government (elementary). 


American. 


English History (elementary). 


Civics. 


General History (elementary). 


English. 




Modern. 




Ancient. 




General. 




Greek. 




Roman. 




French. 


Physical Training. 


Physical Training. 


Calisthenics. 


Calisthenics. 


School Athletics. 


Gymnasium. 




School Athletics. 



THE PRINCIPALSHIP 



187 



Grammar School 


High School (or Academy) 


Medical Inspection. 
Eye and ear tests. 


Medical Inspection. 

Eye and ear tests, strength, etc. 


Music. 
Songs. 
Class Training. 


Music. 
Songs. 

Class Training. 
Individual Vocal Culture. 


Manual Training. 
Sewing. 
Doll Dressing. 
Cooking. 
Paper Cutting. 
Knife Work. 
Scroll Sawing. 
Bench Work. 
Sheet Metal Cutting. 


Manual Training. 
Dressmaking. 
Millinery. 
Cookery. 

Household sanitation. 
Bench Work. 
Wood Turning. 
Iron Forging. 
Iron Construction. 
Pattern Making. 


Art. 

Drawing in various mediums. 
Water Color. 
Clay Modeling. 
Designing. 


Art. 

Drawing in various mediums. 

Water Color. 

Oil Painting, etc. 

Clay Modeling. 

Designing. 

History of Art. 


School Assemblies and Entertain- 
ments. 


School Entertainments, Clubs, and 
Dramatics. 



The courses above presented actually exist in many 
communities. The mere scholarship of a high school 
principal rises to a matter of considerable dignity. He 
must know as much of pedagogy and of psychology 



1 88 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

(adolescent) as the grammar school principal knows of 
pedagogy and psychology (child study). A grammar 
school principal may reasonably aspire to know as much 
of every subject as any teacher. This is impossible to the 
high school principal, who has, as subordinates, specialists 
in their departments. 

But for the fact that, in nearly all communities, some of 
the elementary schools have more children than the high 
school has, there would be even more disparity than there 
is now between the salaries of grammar and high school 
principals, in favor of the latter. 

An essential difference between the two positions lies in 
the fact that, in matters of discipline and promotion, the 
elementary school principal deals with both child and 
parent, while the high school principal deals with the 
youth alone, unless he requests the parents' counsel. The 
modern American boy or girl is much harder to deal with 
than the typical parent, to whom he or she seldom appeals. 
Every high school principal needs to set aside time daily 
to consult with the pupils over discipline and studies, at 
their request as well as at his own initiative. 

So much by way of comparison. The differences are 
obvious ; but a demonstration emphasizes and enforces the 
facts. The comparison makes extended comment upon 
the specific duties of the different positions unnecessary. 
Special features of each principalship may be noted under 
the head of suggestions. 

1. In the high school a wide range of electives (either 
as courses or as subjects) or of options is highly desirable.^ 

2. It is very desirable that the pupils should look 
upon the principal as a man of peculiarly broad scholar- 
ship and of personally inspiring and enthusiastic qualities. 

1 A plan is suggested in Appendix VI. 



THE PRINCIPALSHIP 1 89 

This can be secured by judicious Monday morning talks 
on ethics, politics, science, and literature.^ These should 
not bear upon conduct directly in relation to individuals 
or school discipline. Such remarks may be reserved for 
other days in the week. The wise principal will support 
judiciously the out-of-school interests of dramatics, of ath- 
letics, of musicals, and of scientific and historical excursions. 

3. The high school principal does well to encourage all 
outside voluntary cultural movements, such as debating 
societies, science clubs, amateur photography, even stamp 
collecting. He ought to welcome every opportunity to 
bring together the high school alumni. Such as are out 
of college and in the way of earning incomes may be 
encouraged to join together and to present to the school 
such art objects as pictures, casts, tapestries, valuable 
books. Coming from the alumni or former students, 
these are treasured far more than those which may be 
purchased with public money. 

4. As the foremost man employed in the schools, and 
next to the superintendent of all the schools, the high 
school principal owes to the superintendent a peculiarly 
loyal support, unless he desires to be considered as aspir- 
ing to the superintendency.2 He should be close to the 
superintendent in all scholarly interests, and his personal 
friend without any rivalry. Apart from salary, the high 
school principalship is to the scholar and educator essen- 

1 It IS true that all these matters are dealt with more or less in the class rooms. But it is 
often a great surprise and help to a boy to find that the high school principal knows and en- 
joys and can explain a great passage in poetry, or the great themes in ethics. A principal 
does a great deal more good by preparing carefully a Monday morning talk for the several 
hundred or more high school pupils who secretly or openly believe in him, than in any possi- 
ble Sunday-school class teaching, not excepting the Bible class. Let him who thinks other- 
wise remember well that education is decidedly a sacred ministry to the most susceptible and 
hopeful of all human beings. 

2 For a discussion of the relative salaries to be paid to superintendents and principals, see 
Chapter XVI, " Salary, Tenure, and Certificate." 



190 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

tially a more desirable position than the superintendency 
because of its security and of the immediate relations with 
aspiring youth, the happiest feature of all school work. 

5. In the modern coeducational high school, the pro- 
portion of boys to girls varies from two to three, to one 
to two. In view of the fact that three times as many boys 
go to college as girls, this means that the public high 
school is a girls' finishing school chiefly, and only in part 
a general boys* and girls' college preparatory school. 
This means also that in American life, in the next quarter- 
century, there will be more women who are high school 
graduates than men. A high school principal cannot 
manage his institution solely with reference to the boys. 

The needs, powers, and interests of boys and girls differ 
radically at the high school age. It is noticeable that few 
boys and many girls elect biology, French, or astronomy, 
while many boys and few girls elect Greek, trigonometry 
(or, indeed, any mathematics, when all mathematics are 
elective), physics, or geology.^ As a general proposition, 
a school whose required course is hard enough for girls, is 
too easy for boys. 

The following differences in the management of boys from that of 
girls are suggested to be made, when it is possible to make any ; as 
indeed it seldom is, in public high schools where the number of teachers 
is almost always too few. 

I. Boys should have fewer lessons and longer ones daily than girls. 
Per contra^ girls should have more lessons and shorter ones daily than 
boys. 

II. Boys should follow a subject out to the end: their principle is 

* Any high school teacher who follows up this matter in statistics and in personal inquiry 
among pupils will discover in the course of a few years highly interesting facts and 
reasons. To illustrate : Girls* preferences for French and astronomy are undoubtedly due to 
the traditions of the past, when to read and speak French was the proper accomplishment 
of a " young lady " and when astronomy was the one and only science studied by young 
ladies. The interest in biology is due to various causes, of which the chief is its nearness 
to embryology, a subject of peculiar significance to women. 



THE PRINCIPALSHIP 191 

thoroughness. Per contra^ girls should learn the elements of many 
subjects. 

The reasons for the kind and amount of work for the girls are : that 
girls tire more quickly than boys ; and that they need to have aroused in 
them early as wide a variety of interests as possible. In married life, a 
woman's horizon is limited. The woman with a family of little children 
needs to have a mind well supplied with a variety of recollections. 

The reasons for the kind and amount of work for the boys are : that 
in mature life, by reading newspapers, and associating with many men in 
daily affairs, their minds become broadened ; and that a man's success 
in life depends on the thoroughness and accuracy of his special knowl- 
edge.^ 

6. Because every high school is judged educationally by 
the quality of its graduates who go to college or into busi- 
ness, the high school principal ought to be consulted in all 
selections of teachers for his school. The principal should 
be such a man as the superintendent is glad to consult, 
and the superintendent should be a man sufficiently supe- 
rior to the principal that the latter will be willing to leave 
the final decision to him. 

7. Because the graduates of the high school go to the 
colleges, the principal should annually visit a few higher 
institutions of learning to see what the conditions actually 
are, and to note changes.^ By this means also he is able 
to give intelligent advice to parents and pupils regarding 
higher institutions of learning. Unless the public school 
educator makes such visits, he is apt to regard his own 
college as either the only college to which to send stu- 
dents, or the only one to which not to send them. Such 
is the prejudice or the perversity, the gratitude or the 
ingratitude, of our human nature. 

8. As the high school prepares for the normal school 

* For a discussion of the causes of failure in the high school, see my monograph, " Why 
Boys and Girls Fail." 
» See Chapter XVI. 



192 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

or college, so grammar schools prepare for the high school. 
Being in the same community, the principals and teachers 
of each school should exchange visits a few days in each 
year. Great good is certain to follow. 

It is a tradition among teachers that the preceding 
teacher always did his work badly : children are never " up 
to grade." The reasons for this appearance are two : chil- 
dren's brains are growing; old cells disappear; old associa- 
tions are lost. This is the cause of their amazing progress. 
And in the second place, no one ever appears well before 
strangers. Those teachers who at the end of a month or 
six weeks see a great improvement in a class are foolish to 
flatter themselves. In truth, it is the good work of the 
preceding teacher coming to the surface again.^ 

9. Upon the grammar school principal falls a heavy 
burden of discipline, due to the presence of many "be- 
lated " children in the grades and of many children attend- 
ing only because of parental or legal pressure. The wise 
principal will try to prevent the multiplication of "inef- 
ficients," as well as of " illiterates," of whom the inefficient 
are often more undesirable than the illiterates. He will 
think of his graduates, the school-graduated and the self- 
graduated, under these heads, as adults-to-be, namely: — 

I. Both literate and efficient. 

II. The efficient but not literate. 

III. The literate but not efficient. 

IV. Both illiterate and inefficient. 

He will then subdivide classes II, III, and IV as 
either made so by heredity, that is, the naturally deficient, 

1 The aim is not to *' run a good school " but to save, to help, to improve the children as 
much as possible. It makes a school better so to discourage a dull child as to drive him 
away (after the compulsory age limit is passed), but it is not sound educational practice 
to do so. 



THE PRINCIPALSHIP 193 

or as being such of mere willfulness. All these deficient 
and defective students he will study daily and hourly. 

Because of his interest in them and of his interest in the 
nation, he will endeavor to secure for his school : — 

I. As good teachers as possible ; ^ 

II. As wide and rich a course of study as possible ; ^ 

III. As good an equipment as possible ; ^ and 

IV. The best possible administrative system.^ 

With all the prestige that attaches to the high school, the actual 
education, the awakening power, is rather in the elementary school. 
To illustrate : Noticing the improved dress of the children in a cer- 
tain new school, the superintendent commented thereon. Whereupon 
one little boy said : " My father says I cannot go to a fine clean school 
any more in dirty clothes. And mother says father quit drinking so as 
to save money for my new shoes." Other significant things were said 
by the children upon the same occasion. 

10. The well-educated and experienced grammar school 
principal is almost invariably an enthusiastic apostle of 
kindergartens for all children below six years of age. 
Whether the children of well-to-do homes, whose mothers 
have time to work and play with them, should go to school 
before eight or nine years of age is not the real question 
in issue. Most mothers in American life to-day are too 
busy or too ignorant to do anything for their children 
during the daytime. It is a question of neglect at home, 

* Every elementary school needs male as well as female class teachers, college as well as 
normal school graduates, and both young and old teachers. 

' Herein lies the argument for manual training, that it works for the removal of ineffi- 
ciency, and the argument for the elective course, that by its variety it has something to 
interest all. 

3 The discipline and the intellectual activity of boys and girls in fine buildings with 
excellent equipment always are better than in poor buildings. Poverty is a curse, a curse 
to the child as well as to the adult, to the individual as well as to the nation. The poverty 
of most American schools is a deliberate and avoidable curse, due to the ignorance, the indif- 
ference, the avarice, of a majority of the community. Over and over again, statistics have 
proven that to tear down a miserable building and to erect a better one is permanently to im- 
prove health, attendance, scholarship, and conduct. 

* The question of grade is discussed in Chapter VIII, " The Graded Public School." 



194 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

often of play on the street, and of care at kindergartens 
for most children in towns and cities. A child under six 
is too young seriously to undertake the learning of reading, 
writing, spelling, and numbers. The kindergarten, with 
its drawing, weaving, games, numbers, letters, songs, is 
a very good place for the child, almost as good indeed as 
a model home.^ 

II. The question of the relation of the principal to the 
board of education has been answered indirectly at vari- 
ous points in the preceding pages. In a well-conducted 
and coordinated school system, no board member will go 
direct to a principal with orders ; and no principal will go 
direct to a board member with complaints. Officially, 
board members and subordinate educational employees 
have no relations other than those of courtesy. The 
principal is an employee of the board of education as a 
corporation, and is not the employee of any board mem- 
ber. Between himself and the board of education is an 
intermediate officer, the superintendent. In emergencies, 
a principal may do things of an unusual nature, at the sug- 
gestion of a board member or of anybody else. When he 
does exercise this discretionary power, which is inevitably 
lodged in his hands, he does it as a principal, not as an 
employee, and is answerable to the superintendent. Nor 
is the plea of an order from a board member any defense 
for an error. Unless this principle is strictly adhered to, 
chaos at once sets in. When a principal feels strongly 
that he must go with a complaint, not to the superintend- 
ent, but to a board member, he virtually asserts the incom- 
petence or the prejudice of the superintendent. 

^ Throughout this book, here and elsewhere, except so far as they are related to adminis- 
tration or supervision, all purely pedagogical matters are omitted. Our concern is, how 
to run a successful school system whose purpose it is always to do the largest possible 
service in the community. 



THE PRINCIPALSHIP 195 

It is a singular and an instructive fact that only ward 
schools and almost never high schools suffer from failure 
to follow this principle. The cause is the lower position 
of the head of a grammar school, because his jurisdiction 
does not cover the city, and because he has small children. 

12. It is true of all principals that they are expected to 
keep longer hours at school than any teachers. They 
conduct teachers* meetings after school. They hold private 
individual consultations with teachers. There is a tendency 
in country districts and in the smaller cities for teachers 
and principals to remain too long after school. Children 
are detained too long. The opposite tendency in certain 
large cities, for teachers to do no preparation, to come to 
school late and to leave early, has the advantage of being 
in the interests of health for all concerned. 

As a general proposition, for schools with sessions from 9 a.m. to 
12 M., and from 1.15 p.m. to 3 p.m., the principal should be at the 
school by 8.15 a.m., and the teachers by 8.30 a.m., and the teachers 
should leave by 3.45 p.m., and the principal by 4.30 p.m. In the long 
run of the years, allowing for occasional exceptions for a longer stay, 
once a week at most, the school will be all the better when these com- 
paratively short hours are kept.^ 

All teachers ought to leave their buildings at noon for the outdoor 
air and ought to eat " hot lunches." 

Such may be considered the special matters to engage 
the attention of high and grammar school principals in the 
smaller cities.^ Occasionally in such cities there are train- 

1 The grade meetings and the seminars after school, when not over an hour long, are a 
real blessing, in that they take the teacher out of doors to a different building, and estab- 
lish the habit of leaving school early. The old fashion of going to school at 7 a.m. and 
staying till 5 p.m. was well enough in the days when school-teachers spent half their time 
sewing and knitting and doing fancy work, while the scholars " worked sums," chopped 
wood, and played " tit-tat-to." The business system of supervision gets more educational 
work done now in a day than used to be done in a week, with a corresponding increase of 
nervous wear and tear of teachers and pupils. 

2 The broad principles were discussed in Chapter III, " Administration," and in Chapter 
IV, " Supervision." 



196 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

ing classes for teachers, vacation summer schools for 
children, evening schools, reform or parental schools and 
playgrounds, manual training or industrial schools, and 
primary schools. 

A training class in connection with a high school course 
in any city of less than a quarter of a million people is a 
possible peril to its educational interests, because of the 
temptation to the board of education to make its course a 
"short cut" into the teaching positions of the schools. 
Undoubtedly, it is better to take as teachers the graduates of 
such schools than to be compelled to take those who have 
been in the high school only without a later pedagogical 
course. A two years' course after graduation from a four 
years' high school course is the least duration that should 
be considered at all. Three years is little enough. The 
ordinary college course after high school graduation is 
four years. And no young woman should begin teach- 
ing under twenty years of age. It is far better to begin 
at twenty-two than at nineteen, because the health is better 
established and the character is more soundly developed. 

The difficulties of the training class or training school in the small 
city are these, namely : — 

I. Of getting enough money for the support of the work. Training 
school teachers should be more proificient and should have higher salaries 
than high school teachers. And there should be a teacher for each 
year of the course, and an extra teacher for every group of apprentices 
beyond sixteen in number in each grade. That is, forty students in a 
single year require at least three teachers ; or twenty students divided 
into two years require two teachers. Otherwise, there can be no 
proper and adequate training. 

II. Of getting adequate accommodations for the training classes. A 
great objection to the graduates of many normal schools, until very re- 
cent years, has been that they were trained in poor school buildings 
and had poor standards of work. In consequence, their standards of 
physical equipment have been low. 



THE PRINCIPALSHIP 197 

The principal of such a local school needs to be ambitious, resolute, 
and scholarly beyond even the high school principal. The normal 
schools are making the teachers, who in their turn are making the 
minds of the great masses of our boys and girls. In many respects, 
most men and women do not grow much beyond their powers and 
ideals of their last year at school, which was in most cases a grammar 
grade. 

Vacation summer schools and playgrounds offer peculiar 
problems that require fuller treatment than is warranted 
in these pages by the present or the probable future num- 
ber of such schools in small communities. It is to be 
noted, however, that the principals of such schools are 
usually the principals of regular grammar schools, or at 
least experienced teachers from the regular schools. The 
purposes of vacation schools are admirable, — 

I. To provide occupation and care for the great number 
of children who cannot go away into the country for the 
summer. 

II. To give as many months of "schooling" in the 
years of childhood as possible to those children who must 
leave school for work at the limit of compulsory attendance, 
usually fifteen years of age.^ 

III. On the negative side, to keep children " off the 
streets " where, unguided by adults, they are likely to de- 
generate sadly during the " long vacation." 

The summer vacation school for children or adults is a 
protest against the recent idea that school ought not to 
" keep " during hot weather.^ 

The principalship of the evening school is a difficult and 
an important enterprise. Its importance consists in its 
meeting several needs. 

I. It meets the needs, or ought to, of all persons who, 

1 See Chapter XIIT, " The Educational Policy of the Community." 

2 See Chapter XII, " The New Education." 



193 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

having left school early and having seen in real life the 
demand for skillful labor or service, desire to secure an 
education by evening instruction and study. These per- 
sons deserve to be well provided for by their community. 
In most evening schools nine out of ten, and in many all, 
of the students are daily wage-earners. 

II. It meets the needs of society, which is almost always 
oversupplied with unskilled and inefficient laborers and 
servants, and is always undersupplied with skilled and 
efficient laborers and servants. 

III. It meets the needs of the exceptional young man 
who, without opportunity, cannot rise to the full measure 
of his ambition and ability ; but who, with opportunity, 

may become an artist, an engineer, an executive manager, | 

a journalist, or indeed whatever his talents and oppor- 
tunities together permit. 

The great difficulties of the evening schools are these, 
namely : — 

I. To secure sufficient funds to offer a variety of courses. 
Often in evening schools, it is educationally worth while to 
teach one student. 

To illustrate : In a certain small city, the evening school course in 
mechanical drawing had two students. By reason of their instruction, 
in their daily employment one rose from $8 to $15 a week at once, and 
the other from $6 to $10. In a year, this meant an increase in earning 
power for both together of over $500. The instruction for one hundred 
and twenty-eight evenings cost the community $256. The next year 
twelve, and the following year twenty-three, students took the course. 
In the meanwhile, a large manufacturing concern moved its works to 
the city and in a public statement gave as one of its three reasons for 
so doing, the excellent supply of skilled draughtsmen in the local labor 
market. Then the board of education raised the instructor's salary to 
$4 per evening. 

The principal of an evening school must protect the 



THE PRINCIPALSHIP 1 99 

interests of all the students, especially those of the bright- 
est and most industrious. There are now too many per- 
sons of similar preparation for life. We must force up 
every available boy and man, girl and woman, lest we have 
a great surplus of laborers on the market who will force 
the general mass of laborers down. We can get rid of 
excessive competition for work only by educating as many 
as possible for new, higher, and more efficient kinds of 
work. Everything that we can do to make some boys 
different from other boys, and more intelligent than aver- 
age boys, helps not only the fortunate boy who is well 
educated, but also all boys who are less well educated, 
since it removes one more rival for inferior general work, 
and develops the superior special worker, whose work 
itself, being outside the sphere of competition, necessarily 
benefits others, including the less fortunate. 

II. To hold in attendance the greater number of those 
who register and come for a few evenings and then " drop 
out." An evening school is a constant exemplification of 
the parable of the sower.^ 

The means to hold those whose interest is weak or whose physical 
strength is small, are various : — 

1. Sending out postal cards or letters whenever a student is absent 
for two sessions. These should be written by the class teacher. They 
show the school's interest in the absentee's welfare. 

2. Offering a variety of courses so as to reach a variety of interests 
and needs. 

It is usually hard to persuade a board of education to open an even- 
ing high school. The courses to be offered must vary with locality. 
The following are usually valuable in the smaller cities, namely : — 

Algebra, geometry, trigonometry. 

Freehand and mechanical drawing. 

German, — language and literature. 

English, — grammar, composition, rhetoric, literature. 

1 Matthew, chapter xiii, verses 3 to 23. 



200 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

History, — American, English, modern, general. 

Shorthand and typewriting. 

Commercial law. 

Commercial arithmetic and bookkeeping. 

In the larger cities, a far greater variety of courses is required. 

3. Encouraging the social life by Saturday evening "sociables" and 
entertainments (with or without lectures) in the school buildings. 
Prominent citizens may be invited to give addresses. This encourages 
the plodding students and interests prominent people in the school. 

III. To find suitable books for use in the elementary 
classes. The presence of well-grown youth and of adults in 
the illiterate classes and in the English classes for foreign- 
ers, as well as in the classes in arithmetic, has revealed a 
defect in the text-book list that only recently has been 
even partially remedied. The contents of children's read- 
ers and arithmetics are by no means suited to interest 
adults. This has necessitated finding teachers with time 
to spare for the preparation of lessons, thus further com- 
plicating the evening school situation, in which the small 
appropriations have made it difficult to secure any teachers. 

IV. To find men and women of sufficient physical 
strength to do successful work in both day and evening 
schools, or else to get sufficient funds to pay men and 
women to do nothing else than evening school work. 

By having two teachers for a day class, one for morning and the 
other for afternoon, it is possible to provide teachers for evening school 
who shall not be too weary for the work. This does not, however, 
solve the problem of securing a competent principal. 

The principalship of the reform or parental school opens 
up the great field of sociology even more widely than 
does that of the ordinary school. The purpose of such a 
school is to save the morally bad. As long as it costs 
one thousand dollars a year to keep a criminal in a 



THE PRINCIPALSHIP 201 

penitentiary or a reformatory, no amount is too great that 
a State or a city can be persuaded to spend upon reform 
or parental schools to keep boys from growing up to be 
criminals. 

The principal of a reform school must be a student of 
causes as well as of methods, — able to diagnose mental and 
moral conditions. There is no school wherein he may be 
trained. The development of a competent principal in the 
course of ordinary educational training is unusual ; his dis- 
covery by a board of trustees is apt to be an accident.^ 

The manual training or mechanics arts or industrial 
school is distinctly a special development. By some, it is 
gravely urged that two courses of education from the very 
beginning of school life should be open to the children, 
namely : — 

Literary Course : Industrial Course : 

Chiefly English language, his- Chiefly mathematics, Nature 

tory, music, geography, an- study, physical training, sci- 

cient and modern languages. ences. 

To produce merchants, scholars, To produce mechanics, farmers, 

etc. etc. 

Whether the adoption of a dual system of schools would 
or would not be practical, its unfortunate tendency to 
divide American society into two classes is obvious. 
Nevertheless, upon a sufficiently broad foundation the 
manual training school is desirable.^ The principalship of 
such a school involves a practical knowledge of the world's 
and the community's industrial affairs that is very rare in 
school men. Without such a knowledge, the work of the 

1 Several investigations are now going forward as to reform and parental schools. Among 
these is that which is being conducted by the New Jersey State Council of Education. The 
only reason why there are not now many more such schools is because it was the hopeful 
confidence of early American free common school enthusiasts that no such schools would be 
needed. The subject is practically new in the field of education. 

2 See Chapter XII, " The New Education." 



202 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

school is apt to be theoretical and misapplied. But the 
man who has that knowledge is usually not an educator. 

The future of American education promises a great and 
rapid multiplication of industrial schools, a multiplication 
limited only by the supply of men competent to establish 
and conduct them. 

The primary school, with its four or five years of instruc- 
tion, is the most narrowly restricted of all city schools. 
The principal of such a school almost always is, and usually 
should be, a woman. The presence of a primary school in 
a community is sometimes a striking demonstration of the 
partial failure of American education to reach all who 
ought to be educated, for it shows that most children go 
to school only until their work begins to be economically 
valuable. Even girls are being withdrawn from school at 
fourteen or fifteen years of age (indeed, earlier where com- Ij 

pulsory education laws are evaded) in order to help at home I 

or to work in mill, factory, shop, or store. ^ 

The successful management of a primary school requires 
a strong maternal instinct and interest. To principals 
without love for little children,^ the routine of the position '" 

soon grows irksome. Important as personality is in all 
school principalships, it is nowhere more important than 
in the principalship of the primary school. 

The power of a strong principal in such a school is over- 

1 Many people undoubtedly think that school is only for little children. Illustrations 
from secret society " esoteric work" and from the "common talk" abundantly prove this. 
" He (or she) is too big to go to school," is the remark that precedes the removal of most 
boys and girls from school. The historical origin of this is interesting. It is partly the 
economic tradition. As soon as any young animal is big enough to take care of itself, send 
it out into the world: such is the tradition. Fiske's "prolonged infancy" theory is scien- 
tifically true, though most men limit the infancy of their offspring too narrowly. The 
greater beasts of prey keep their cubs with them until nearly full grown. Many a father 
expects his son or daughter to be self-supporting when not half grown. Such a man has 
not yet grown to the intellectual and moral stature of the American. See Chapter XII, 
" The New Education." 



THE PRINCIPALSHIP 203 

whelming. Little children are natural hero worshipers. 
And mothers and fathers quickly adopt their children's 
attitude toward principal, teachers, and schools. 

To illustrate: A new and strong principal in such a city school 
within a few weeks broke up child beating in an entire neighborhood, 
reformed the mode of dressing children, and made her school a center 
of radiant light, at once reflected in better home life and in a surprising 
interest in school affairs. 

There remains to be noted, in the public school system 
of the State, the public normal schools. The importance 
of such schools is certain to increase rather than to diminish 
in the coming quarter-century. The normal school holds 
a position between high school graduation and entrance 
upon class room teaching. In character, it is in some 
respects a college and in others a professional training 
school, for it gives both academic instruction and peda- 
gogical training. The normal school is in the early stages 
of its development, for its two or three years' course is 
inadequate for the proper preparation of teachers, and 
the tendency is to recognize this fact by lengthening the 
duration of the teacher's apprenticeship. 

The principalship of a normal school is in one respect 
like a city superintendency, for the principal is directly 
responsible to a board of control. In many respects, a 
State normal school principalship resembles a State uni- 
versity chancellorship rather than an endowed university 
presidency. 

The principalship of a State normal school is the most 
independent of all public school positions even in the 
States with State universities, because of the principal's 
large control of the expenditure of money. Its responsi- 
bilities are heavier in amount, though less varied, than 
even those of city superintendencies. A State normal 



204 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

school principal is responsible to every village, town, 
and city for the quality of the graduates of his school; 
that, at least, is the presumption. It is, therefore, by no 
means uncommon for the principal of a normal school 
to have almost absolute control of the appointment and 
discharge of teachers and the installation of courses of 
study. Fortunately for the principal, his board of con- 
trol is apt to recognize the fact that such matters are 
professional. 

Such is the importance of normal schools that it war- 
rants the setting forth of certain principles for their 
administration toward whose realization all ought to move 
as rapidly as possible. 

1. A requirement that all public and private teachers 
must be normal school or college graduates. 

2. A requirement that all entering students must be 
graduates of standard high schools or the equivalent. 
This may be defined as holding diplomas representing at 
least the following attainments: Four years of English 
rhetoric, literature, composition; four years of German, 
or Latin, or French, or Greek, taken singly or combined; 
two years of science ; two years of history, English, Greek, 
Roman, or general, in any combination ; two years of alge- 
bra and geometry ; with four years of art, music, physical 
training, manual training, domestic science, in suitable 
combinations ; and with other equivalent studies, the total 
being twenty hours of recitation, forty weeks in the year, 
for four years, that is, some thirty-two hundred recitation 
periods, including reviews, tests, and examinations. 

3. Provision for at least four hundred hours of practice 
as a teacher, with or without a critic ; that is, two hours 
daily for two hundred days, or the equivalent. 

Normal schools have no right to certify teachers as 



THE PRINCIPALSHIP 20$ 

competent until the habit of good teaching in varied con- 
ditions is estabUshed. All normal schools must have a 
good practice school, not too small. 

4. Thorough and extensive academic and professional 
work for four years. This may seem a long course. But 
it is only as long as the present standard college course, 
which is none too long when it is a finishing course. 

5. The appointment to the faculty of the normal school 
of only such educators as are amply prepared for the 
work, their payment upon that basis, and their assignment 
to not over twelve or fourteen hours of instruction per 
week. Such a faculty will not be likely to send out gradu- 
ates who imagine themselves fitted to teach thenceforth 
through life without further study. 

6. Provision whereby at the end of the first year in the 
normal school the State will take such students as ap- 
pear likely to make good teachers and support them. A 
nation that can afford West Point and Annapolis for the 
preparation for the leaders in war sets a good example to 
the States. They may all well afford to prepare and main- 
tain the exemplars of peace. 

As a fair allowance for the support of normal appren- 
tices, four hundred dollars annually for the second, third, 
and fourth years is suggested.^ 

1 Four hundred dollars should be the minimum salary by law, payable in any State 
annually to any teacher. In many States, the minimum should be higher. Such a minimum 
would tend to remove all temptation to employ cheap incompetents. In expectation of the 
allowance suggested, even the poorest boys and girls could get enough funds for the first 
year by borrowing and paying back the loan from savings during the course. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE SUPERVISORSHIP 

SuPERVisoRSHiPS have been established in many compara- 
tively small towns, and in nearly all cities, for four distinctly 
different reasons. 

I. Because supervision has been recognized as an ex- 
tremely valuable help in the establishment of good schools.^ 
This is a general reason. 

II. Because at the time of the installation of new sub- 
jects in the course of study, it has often been found that 
many old teachers were unfamiliar with them. In these 
cases, the supervisors have been employed as specialists, 
either to teach the children, directly, or to teach the class 
teachers how to teach the children. All the subjects of 
the so-called "new education" have been introduced only 
by means of experts in them; that is, artists, musicians, 
woodworkers, physical trainers, etc.^ In actual practice 
in all communities, the supervisors or assistant supervisors 
teach both the children and the teachers, often at the same 
time, by means of illustrative lessons. Supervision involves 
illustration as well as criticism by blame and praise. 

III. Because, in actual fact, the superintendent is often 
unable to give that detailed supervision which the schools 
actually need. His administrative duties grow with the 
growth of the community ; as they grow, the time avail- 
able for supervision decreases. 

1 For a discussion of the principles of supervision, see Chapter IV, " Supervision." 
a See Chapter XII, " The New Education." 

206 



THE SUPERVISORSHIP 207 

IV. Because, in a considerable school system, there can 
be no uniformity without comparison of schools. This 
can be made constantly only when the supervisory force 
is adequate. 

V. Because the average grade of work in certain lines 
has fallen so low as to require special attention. 

In consequence, various supervisorships have been added, 
all of them being in the nature of outgrowths of the super- 
intendency, — its branches, as it were. All supervisorships 
represent the central office, and all supervisors are the 
direct agents of the superintendent. The fact that many 
supervisors know more than he knows about their subject 
does not in the least affect the relationship. 

Reason I has supported the creation of every kind of supervisorship. 

Reason II has led to the creation of supervisorships in art, manual 
training, music, physical training, kindergarten, domestic science and 
art, Nature study, reading by phonic methods, German, French, 
Spanish, medical inspection of health. 

Reason III has led to the creation of associate and assistant super- 
visorships. 

Reason IV has led to the creation of grammar grade, primary grade, 
and kindergarten supervisorships, and to various forms of inspectorship. 

Reason V has led to the creation of supervisorships in any and all of 
the standard school studies and exercises, penmanship and reading 
supervisorships being common. 

Many supervisorships indicate, not that most of the 
teachers do their work poorly, but that the educational 
standard of the community is high, and that the course of 
study is broad. The superintendent who advocates super- 
visorships does not create the impression that he himself 
is inexpert and idle, but that he means to have good schools, 
and feels confident of his ability to manage specialists. 
Since most boards of education contain members who are 
willing to magnify the importance of their office, it is 



208 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

seldom as difficult to secure the new supervisorships as it 
is to raise the salaries and the general quality of old 
supervisorships. The drift in American education to-day 
is fast becoming a current that bears many supervisor- 
ships into the school systems. For the protection of the 
school children, educators in office must see that adequate 
standards and salaries are provided and adequate quali- 
fications are demanded to secure good supervisors. 
The duties of the supervisor are these, namely : — 

1. To represent worthily the department in which his 
serves, and fairly the policy of the superintendent whom 
he represents. For a principal to oppose the policy of the 
school superintendent is unfortunate for both; it is dis- 
loyalty to the best interests of the schools unless the oppo- 
sition is open warfare, public and continuous, and designed 
to secure the removal of the superintendent. But for a 
supervisor to oppose the policy of the superintendent is a 
kind of school treason, and is essentially unforgivable. 
This is equally true whether the treason is secret or open, 
and whether the supervisor was appointed before or after 
the superintendent. 

This principle ought to be recognized by all teachers, 
and ought to be enforced by all boards of education. 

2. To hold regular meetings for the instruction of the 
teachers ; to furnish them with outlines and programs ; to 
counsel with them. 

3. To exemplify his own art; to understand its inher- 
ent method; and to be able to correlate it with other 
school subjects. 

4. To organize exhibits (or entertainments) by which 
the school children's proficiency in the supervised depart- 
ment may be shown to all persons interested. 

5. To supervise the work of all teachers who give any 



THE SUPERVISORSHIP 



209 



instruction in his art and to report thereon to the super- 
intendent 

6. To give in the classes lessons in the art for the 
instruction of the children or of the class teacher or of 
both. 

7. To grow in knowledge and in skill ; that is, in both 
general and technical knowledge, and in skill both as an 
artist and as a teacher of the art. 

The supervisory positions are the weak spots in most 
small school systems, being relatively poorer in quality 
of the persons occupying them than are the positions of 
principal and teacher. The reasons are two : — 

I. The supervisorships are a recent development, not yet 
well understood so as to be supported by public sentiment. 

II. They are hard to fill at the salaries these new posi- 
tions are considered worth by the boards of education. 



To illustrate a typical condition : ^ — 

Superintendent 
High school principal . 
Elementary principals . 
Supervisors . 
High school teachers 
Elementary teachers 



$3000 

$2000 

$800 to $1200 2 

$600 to $1000 5 

$600 to $1400 

$450 to $675 



This would be a more reasonable condition, namely 



Superintendent 

High school principal 

Elementary principals 

Supervisors 

High school teachers 

Elementary teachers 



$3000 
$2400 

$900 to $1800 
$800 to $2000 
$600 to $1400 
$450 to $800 



* These are the actual figures of a certain small city in the East, 1903-1904. 
' Paid to general primary supervisor. 

* Paid to principal of a school of eight hundred children. 



2IO ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

This latter arrangement undoubtedly involves spending more money. 
But it accords^ with certain fundamental and essential relations. It 
gives the supervisors higher salaries than any persons receive who 
are to be supervised. To send a $1000 elementary school supervisor 
to supervise the school of a $1200 principal, is to establish only bit- 
terness. To send a $600 special supervisor to help a $675 teacher is 
equally unnecessary, for it can avail nothing good. 

Without going into salary details, proper rank in salaries 
may be indicated as follows, namely : — 

Superintendent. 

Associate superintendent, if any. 

Assistant superintendent, if any. 

High school principal. 

Grammar and primary supervisors, if any. 

Principals of elementary schools.^ 

Supervisors of special subjects. ^ 

High school teachers. 3 

Elementary school teachers and kindergartners.* 

It is a fair question whether men or women make the 
better supervisors. That men make the better administra- 
tors I have already said.^ As a general proposition, women 
make the better supervisors. They are more interested in 
details. They do not make as good associate or assistant 
superintendents, however. From the general proposition 
certain exceptions may be taken. 

In the art supervisorships, women generally do better 
than men, but not always in large school systems, because 
of their physical inferiority and of their lack of admin- 
istrative power. 

1 See Chapter XVI, " Salary, Tenure, and Certificate," for a still more just apportion- 
ment of money for these purposes. 

* Undoubtedly length in office and size of school ought to be considered in the matter of 
elementary school principalships in the smaller cities. 

3 What subjects ought to receive the highest salaries is discussed later. See page 212. 

* Advanced grammar grade teachers should receive especial consideration in the matter 
of salary. ^ See Chapter VI, " The Principalship." 



THE SUPERVISORSHIP 211 

In music, men often do better, especially in the higher 
grades. Their voices seem to attract the children more, 
and give a variety to the singing of the teachers. But at 
the same salary in a small system, women are preferable. 

These generalizations, however, are subject to so many exceptions 
that every skilful school superintendent and every common sense board 
of education should consider personality rather than sex, in all selec- 
tions for such positions. 

Women generally have greater difficulty in persuading 
boys over thirteen years of age to sing than men have, 
while girls of any age are easily led to sing by either 
men or women. Consequently, in a high school, a man 
teacher of singing is preferable. 

In manual training, obviously, the work for boys should 
be conducted by men, and that for girls by women. Simi- 
larly, domestic science and art must be conducted by 
women. 

Physical training : here it is best to have a man for the 
boys of the high and advanced grammar schools, and a 
woman for all other pupils. 

The primary grade supervisors, and special supervisors 
in Nature study, reading, kindergarten, should be women, 
because they deal more successfully with the smaller 
children. 

The medical inspection of schools should be conducted 
by men and women physicians. This inspection is now 
altogether too infrequent or too perfunctory. A separa- 
tion of the sexes for this purpose is essential. 

The supervisors of modern language instruction, when 
given in the elementary schools, may be also high school 
teachers. Sex is a matter of indifference, except so far 
as salary is concerned.^ 

* It is a hard fact, from which we cannot escape, that in this decade of the twentieth cen- 
tury men command salaries from twenty-five to a hundred per cent greater than women of 



212 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Of these various supervisorships the salaries are likely to vary some- 
what, for the following reasons, namely : — 

I. The difference in the length and in the expense of the technical 
preparation. An art education takes many years, and is relatively 
expensive. 

II. The difference in the experience of the supervisors. Almost 
inevitably some supervisors will be many years older than others. 

III. The difference in the number of teachers to be supervised. Art 
covers all grades ; domestic art and science, but few grades. 

IV. The difference in the difficulty of acquiring the knowledge and 
the skill requisite for success. This is a matter of native talent and of 
supply and demand on the market. 

V. The difference in the supervisor's opportunity to earn money out- 
side of his regular school duties ; that is, some supervisorships require 
more before-and-after school work than do others. 

Fortunate is the city that can avoid all this discussion by paying a 
uniform high salary, regardless of the market for supervisors' services. 
Then, to avoid all jealousies, the superintendent must see that all super- 
visors do about the same amount of work, daily, weekly, and yearly. 

To illustrate : To the physical training teachers, whose lessons begin 
later in the school season and end considerably before the time of the 
high school commencement, the superintendent may assign a light 
calisthenics exhibition ; or if his city system has a gymnasium, a com- 
plete gymnastic exhibit. By some ingenuity and forethought, these 
matters can be fairly adjusted. 

Three comparatively new supervisorships (or inspector- 
ships) remain to be considered ; that of the physician, that 
of the sociologist, and that of the psychologist. 

The medical inspection of schools has now advanced to 
the point of eye and ear tests, and to the effort to eliminate 
incipient contagious diseases. In connection with the 
physical training work, there may be given simple tests of 
strength, lung capacity, and other similar matters. But 
these are by no means enough. 

equal competence. From this it is not to be concluded, as democracy has erroneously 
concluded, that there can be a good grammar or high school without men teachers. This is 
impossible; such an effeminate affair is unsymmetrical. It is a hotbed of feminine whims 
and tyrannies. 



THE SUPERVISORSHIP 21 3 

As a nation, we have gone knowledge-mad in our schools. 
We think it none too much to keep a daily record of a 
child's mental condition and to send home a monthly report 
of his progress in so-called scholarship. For his physical 
condition and progress, for his health, which is the foun- 
dation and the substance of him, we care little, sometimes 
nothing. Once in a while, we wake up with a shock to 
the fact that he is physically defective or to the fact that 
he is morally debased, a condition that more often results 
from physical than from mental causes. Scientific medical 
inspection of the school building and of every pupil in it 
is a protest and is progress. Consider the following pro- 
gram and record, namely : — 

I. Annual thorough examination of building, — especially its light- 
ing, heating, ventilation, and sanitation, — by experts. 

II. Semi-annual inspection of each individual. 

1. Each eye, right and left. 

2. Color blindness, each eye. 

3. Balance of eyes. 

4. Each ear, right and left. 

5. Throat and nose, for adenoid growths, etc. 

6. Lungs and chest. 

7. Spinal system, for curvature, etc. 

8. Strength. 

9. Nervous force. 

10. Health, especially digestion and sleep. 
As to each an illustrative note.^ 

1 . In a certain high school, upon the beginning of such inspection, a 
girl was discovered, totally blind in one eye, and going blind in the 
other, who did not know it. Result: one eye saved and the other 
partly restored. At ten years of age, one child in three has defec- 
tive eyesight or eyes. 

2. In an elementary school, a boy who desired to become a designer 

1 The author of this book owes the use of his eyes entirely to the skilful care and surgery 
of certain oculists, in Europe and America, among whom he mentions with gratitude 
Dr. William R. Broughton, of New York and Bloomfield. A competent school physician in 
early life might have saved him many years of trouble. 



214 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

was discovered color-blind in one eye as to red, and in the other as to 
every color. He was taught color for two years and was finally able to 
see all primary colors with both eyes. 

3. Deafness is seldom painful, but as it is often a progressive dis- 
ease, the sooner its presence is known the better. It is a dangerous 
disease in the modern world of steam and electric cars, of machinery, 
and of all manner of automobiles. 

4. In a certain town, a boy of fourteen was afraid to go up and down 
stairs, could not eat, would not study, looked fairly well. A teacher, 
who knew something about physiology, sent him to a throat and nose 
specialist, who removed seven adenoid growths from the throat and 
nose. Three months later, the boy was the delight of his parents for 
physical energy and of his teacher for his mental power. 

5. Consumption is frequently discovered. 

6. One in four of high school girls seems to have spinal curvature 
well begun, sometimes well developed. 

7. An examination for strength is important before boys are allowed 
to play on school football teams. Every high school ought to have a 
gymnasium to remedy weak muscles. 

8. In a certain school, the mother of a girl who was remade by a 
year's gymnasium work, — she was an intelligent but a poor woman, — 
hearing that the politicians proposed " to close the gymnasium," offered 
fifty dollars from her savings bank account toward its maintenance. 
This is the eloquence of fact. 

9. By nervous force is meant speed and persistence and regularity. 
This is an almost perfect test of health. 

10. To stop the drinking of strong coffee at breakfast and the 
sleeping with closed windows with two children in a bed are two 
features of the program of the school's warfare against ignorance, disease, 
and poverty, man's trinity of miseries. 

The above are at best mere illustrations and suggestions. The im- 
portance of the subject in the sphere of school administration is by no 
means indicated by the small space given to it here. The real trouble 
is that horses, houses, and shoes cost money; boys and girls do not. 
Moreover, it has not yet been sufficiently " hammered " into the con- 
sciousness and the conscience of men that " we are all members one 
of another." ^ 

1 A certain man of property gave his only daughter a most elaborate education. A neigh- 
bor's son desired to g® to college, and applied for assistance by the influence of the rich man 



THE SUPERVISORSHIP 21$ 

This line of argument serves for the two other supervis- 
orships. The sociologist is needed in every considerable 
school system to advise regarding courses of study, location 
of schools, plans for school buildings, parents' associations, 
neighborhood clubs, evening lectures, boys' athletics and 
games, mothers' clubs, whatever concerns society.^ His 
business is to know and to understand all localities. He is 
needed because the school is becoming the new integrating 
social center. 

Similarly, the psychologist is needed to pass judgment 
upon all individuals with any peculiarity of note. He is 
to prevent wrecks. Let him study pedagogical methods, 
nascent interests, mental traits of all kinds. Let him diag- 
nose and prescribe. Such a man can do more good than 
a big library of books, because he is a library of knowledge 
ready for use. 

The sociologist and the psychologist may often assist and 
supplement each other. They should be of opposite sexes 
so as to see things from opposite points of view. It makes 

and by loan of money. He got neither. However, he went to college, working his own way. 
After graduation the girl and the youth fell in love. To break the match the rich man took 
his daughter to Europe. The youth, overworked, died of hasty consumption. Four months 
later the girl died of " nervous prostration " and a " broken heart." This was in New Eng- 
land. 

In a city in the Middle West, upon the prominent street, an only son, and heir to a fortune. 
In the back alley, a family of the poor, with scarlet fever, neglected until far advanced. 
The poor children went to a hospital and lived. The rich boy took the disease and died. 

Verily, when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. 

In a great American family, so rich, so strong from generation to generation, as to amount 
to a dynasty, a son married the beautiful but ignorant daughter of several generations of the 
poor. The care of her station and its strange surprises sent her to an asylum at forty, a 
helpless lunatic. Her three sons are there to-day. 

" They are not my children," the man of culture, or of blood, or of station, or of power, 
or of wealth, may say. Very true. But they may be the wives or the husbands of your chil- 
dren, or the grandfathers or grandmothers of your grandchildren. 

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; infinite solicitude for others is the price of 
safety. 

1 He is needed whether he be called by that name or not. If it is easier to secure him 
under the term of assistant superintendent or director of vacation schools, let him be secured 
by that title. 



2l6 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

little difference whether the man or the woman be either 
the one or the other. ^ If he or she cannot be secured 
under this title, let him or her be known as primary super- 
visor or assistant superintendent. The important thing, 
in any case, with regard to the sociologist or the psycholo- 
gist is to have educators of thoroughly equipped mind, 
especially trained in these directions, to be employed in 
school systems to give daily advice. One or both of such 
officers may well be secured in those small school systems 
where there may be no supervising principals in the ele- 
mentary schools, but where a primary supervisor, or both 
primary and grammar supervisors, may be employed in 
addition to the general superintendent. 

All supervisors, general or special, should spend most of their time 
upon the teachers who most need it. The class teacher who teaches 
music well may be exempted from any but infrequent and short calls. 

In a small school system, with four or five schools, where the high 
school is but a department in one of the schools, the question may 
arise, when progress is proposed, as to whether it is best to place 
supervising principals in each school at a total cost of four or five 
thousand dollars, or a man superintendent and a woman primary super- 
visor over all the schools at the same cost. By the former plan, one 
two thousand dollar teacher (the high school principal) and four eight 
hundred dollar teachers may be added to the schools ; by the latter, 
one thirty-five hundred dollar teacher and another at eighteen hundred 
dollars. Quality tells far more than quantity ; and in all ordinary con- 
ditions, the latter plan will produce better results than the former. 

* The work of both sociologist and psychologist is now actually being done, but to differ- 
entiate their functions out of present positions and to integrate them in new and definite 
positions is to make vast progress. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE GRADED PUBLIC SCHOOL 

Let no narrow definition of the school content us. The 
gospel of salvation by education is exemplified there ; that 
gospel is not a formula, but a fact. 

The progress of society is secured only when the adults 
teach the youth all their knowledge and teach this knowl- 
edge to more of the new generation than the number of 
those who knew it in the old, and when the people of the 
new generation increase this knowledge. Culture thus 
becomes the heritage of increasing numbers of people; 
and culture increases mainly by the instrumentality of the 
school. The young redeem and renew the old. 

One of the strongest passions in human nature is to make 
the world for those who come after us better than we found 
it ourselves. Upon that passion is established the school ; 
as upon the strongest passion, love, is established the home. 
By no possibility can either be rooted out of humanity; 
they are the causes of our continuance and of our progress. 
All history is a march toward the goal of perfect homes 
and perfect schools. Therein is the longed-for happiness of 
the soul and of the mind. This is the interpretation of 
land hunger, migrations, and wars, and of all wealth-seeking 
industry and commerce. 

In the heart of the school there are two persons whose 

minds meet, the teacher and the learner, the one who 

knows and the one who desires to know. Let us not be 

deceived by the modern heresy. The school is too vast, 

217 



2l8 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

too various, too strong, too ancient, too outreaehing, to be 
embraced in meaning by a sketch of a young woman teach- 
ing a child. In that relationship often is the true school, 
but we American moderns are sorely wrong in dreaming 
that this is the school universal. The ancients were wiser, 
who saw the philosopher walking with his disciples in the 
groves of Academe, and recognized the fact that those men 
were at school ; who saw Moses among the acolytes in the 
temples of Iris and Osiris and Memnon, listening to the 
secret wisdom of the priests, and knew that the full-grown 
man was at school. 

So eager has the race been for wealth to adorn the home 
that a certain public shame has attached to him who, a 
bearded man, still follows the pursuit of knowledge in the 
school. Yet in all the great civilizations that endured as 
many millenniums as we have lasted centuries, the school, 
like the home, was an institution for life. Nor can we 
Americans last unless the world-old principle revives 
among us, as indeed there are now signs of its stirring. 
What else is the meaning of educational lecture courses, 
of post graduate studies, of institutions of research, of 
schoolhouses open seven days in the week and all day 
long as social centers ? 

Wherever men, young and old, resort day by day that 
they may get understanding from wiser men, there is the 
universal school. In not remembering this truth, we have 
cheapened civilization. We have mistaken the youth's 
entrance upon his occupation for a livelihood as the 
equivalent of matriculation in a university for a life. Some 
of us have considered manhood suffrage a substitute for 
the degree of master of arts. 

It is no marvel that American democracy, aiming at 
universal liberty and adopting the system of free common 



THE GRADED PUBLIC SCHOOL 219 

education as the sole means of securing and maintaining 
liberty, failed to understand the wide meaning of education 
by schooling. Through all centuries hitherto, the school 
has been the privilege of the select. The masses have 
taken ** clerk " to mean one who can read and write ; that 
is, perform the mechanical processes of getting and giving 
information by the eye and hand. The content of the 
information has been a hidden treasure. The masses 
achieved a measure of democracy upon this soil because 
of free land, and long before they knew what democracy 
is. Even this measure of achievement is scarcely two 
generations old in our country. Only about the middle of 
the nineteenth century did human life as such become 
precious in the eyes of men. Until human life did become 
dear to humanity, the free common school could not exist 
either for children or for adults. In the course of parental 
love and from the obviousness of the arts of reading, writ- 
ing, and computing, the children were first gathered into 
the free common school to learn these arts. Moreover, 
thus to gather the children was a real convenience to the 
parents, since it gave them more time for the economic life, 
with its industrial and domestic labors. 

This was truly a strange spectacle in world history for, 
until the middle decades of the nineteenth century in the 
United States, no nation had ever undertaken the universal 
education of its little children.^ On the contrary, the great 
universities and " grammar " schools had absorbed all edu- 
cational interests ; and the universities were little more 
than philosophical conferences, and the grammar schools 
were much like our high schools and colleges. The his- 
tory of our race culture cannot be understood except in 
the light of the fact that, until the rise of American 

1 New England has pursued this course for two hundred years. 



220 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

democracy upon the plateaus of the Alleghanies, educa- 
tion was the privilege of a few adolescent male youth. 
By education, I mean the uplift of the spirit out of the 
flesh; not mere disciplining of the flesh in a "dame- 
school" here and there. 

In the soul of the common people stirred a purpose to 
make their children "literate." They themselves could 
not make them so. But American democracy had quick- 
ened, not only the working people, but the scholars. As 
the free were to win freedom for the slave by battle on 
many a death-smitten field, so the wise were to win wis- 
dom for the ignorant by conflict in many a hard-fought 
and fatal arena of debate and legislation. For the slave 
could not win freedom for himself; his superstitions 
created fear, and fear unnerved his hands. Nor could 
the ignorant win knowlege for himself; his traditions 
created blindness, and blindness misled his steps. Un- 
fortunately for the cause of universal enlightenment, 
democracy seemed to the ignorant to be in conflict with 
scholarship, for democracy affirms equality, fraternity, lib- 
erty, while scholarship acknowledges inequality, mastery, 
obedience. Is not the teacher the superior of the taught ? 
They cannot be equal. A free man cannot go to school 
to a teacher! They cannot be brothers. Is not the 
learner subject to the teacher, for surely one cannot learn 
who disputes authority.? They cannot be equally free. 
Such was and such is yet the general misunderstanding 
of democracy. And it helps to explain the common reluc- 
tance of adult American citizens, especially the ballot- 
casting men, to enroll themselves in evening schools, and 
to be known among their fellow-men as confessing igno- 
rance. 

In truth, democracy as a universal rebellion against 
tyranny, is a rebellion against the tyranny of scholarship 



THE GRADED PUBLIC SCHOOL 221 

and of scholars. But modern scholarship is not tyrannical, 
for it is scientific.^ This modern scholarship is not dog- 
matic, and has no spirit of authority; indeed, protests 
very democratically against authority and desires to find 
the facts ; is humble, eager for truth, whole-hearted, re- 
spectful, equal, never obedient to men. The old democ- 
racy, with its rebellion against the tyranny of priests and 
of lords, is dying out, for its warfare is accomplished. 
A new democracy is rising, that knows nothing about 
equality, fraternity, and freedom, and their quarrel with 
tyranny. This new and higher democracy has set its 
faith upon opportunity and in preparation for opportunity. 
This faith means the best possible education for every 
one; for each one's own sake, for the nation's sake. 
Creating the universal school, the new and enlightened 
democracy will make boys into business men and men into 
yet better business men ; but even more will it make boys 
into citizens and men into yet better citizens ; it will help 
girls to become wise for motherhood and home making, 
and women to become wise for the rearing of children and 
for the betterment of humanity. 

Unless it be true that few persons over fourteen can 
acquire new ideas and develop new purposes, the universal 
school must necessarily be made so rich in the new schol- 
arship and in the abundance of inspiring opportunities 
that men and women as well as children will delight in its 
marvelous opportunities. The justification of the estab- 
lishment of the universal school at any cost may be found 
in several arguments. 

I. Its costs are necessary, lest in a democracy the 

* In a sense in which scholarship may be taken as a type of human activity throughout 
universal history, the term describes without defining what is sometimes defined disagreeably 
as priestcraft. 



222 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

citizens be unfit for their duties, privileges, aihd responsi- 
bilities. The vicious and the pauper imperil every com- 
munity.^ In this view, education is in the nature of police 
protection. With sufficient good schools, there would be 
no criminals. 

2. Society needs the enrichment that will follow the 
thorough and extended education of all individuals. Many 
of the mediocre are now lost to culture and to the higher 
civilization because of the absence of opportunities in 
evening classes for self-improvement. 

The old ideal of a man's good fortune because he pos- 
sessed advantages and privileges in the presence of the 
poverty of all others is now utterly discredited by the 
discerning. The new ideal is that a man's happiness con- 
sists in belonging to a society of the uniformly happy, 
with no gloomy background of the poor, the ignorant, the 
oppressed, and the wretched. A society is great and noble 
when there are none mean and ignoble within its life. In 
such a view of education, the costs are really but invest- 
ments for the future. Every dollar spent on the child or 
man comes back with compound interest. 

3. The nation needs all kinds of well-developed indi- 
viduals to make and to seize all kinds of opportunities. 
Civilization is a stupendous complex of facts and forces ; 
the greater their complication, the higher the civilization. 
This variety of life, produced by education everywhere, 
continued into adult life, lends an ideal charm to this 
dream of civilization made universal. In this view, every 
nation is to become a perfect society. 

4. There is little need to justify the attempts to secure 

* We lost one President, the beloved McKinley, for want of really universal education, 
for the assassin knew nothing of our great national life, and had received no systematic 
schooling in free day schools. 



THE GRADED PUBLIC SCHOOL 223 

the universal school, for it is indeed certain to come. The 
true joy of a home is in its children and youth, but not 
in the expectation that they will grow up to become some 
day men and women like ourselves. We recognize in 
our children infinite possibilities. Because of this belief 
that " of such is the kingdom of heaven," parents and 
relatives love to spend time and money upon children. 
We see in them the effects of the opportunities, treasures, 
and services that time and money secure ; and our hearts 
glow with pleasure. In modern Christian civilization, the 
real cause of the efforts to maintain good schools is affec- 
tion for children and youth. 

So in this democratic nation, whose children all of us 
are. Freedom, brooding as it were over the sons and 
daughters of men in America, delights in us and cherishes 
us for a destiny beyond our dreaming. Freedom is the 
form that the providence of God has taken for us. The 
only limits of freedom are knowledge and training. The 
wisest and the best are the most free. 

When it is remembered that no nation hitherto has 
cherished its plainer people, let it be also remembered 
that there never was a nation like ours hitherto, a self-con- 
scious nation whose government was "of the people, by the 
people, and for the people." All other nations have been 
of the vertical plane,^ class upon class. We are inevitably 
working together for the general good. 

A few isolated exceptions but make the fact clearer. 
The spirit of the nation is the spirit of humanity, and the 
spirit of humanity is brotherly love.^ A democratic nation, 

1 See Chapter IV, " Supervision," page 108. 

2 I regret that the severe limitations of my space prevent the development of this point. 
But see Drummond, "The Ascent of Man"; Patten, "Heredity and Social Progress": 
Kidd, "Principles of Western Civilization"; Giddings, "Principles of Sociology"; and 
indeed all modem books in sociology and kindred subjects. 



224 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

like every good man, is moved by its heart. Many of the 
reasons that we give for extended free public education 
are mere excuses that justify us in doing what we really 
wish and intend to do, irrespective of reasons.^ 

5. Again, there is no need to justify the costs of the 
universal school because this nation's head as well as 
its heart is at work building the school. Free universal 
education is but an expression of the regenerative influ- 
ences of scholarship working in the minds and hearts of 
many men and women. This wonderful modern culture, 
as we see it exemplified in our best citizens, insists upon 
expression, output, and result. It knows that hoarding 
knowledge is as evil as hoarding money. This new philan- 
thropic culture is energetic, expressive, and proselytizing. 

The man of property is not always desirous that every 
other man shall have equal property. The man of health 
is not always desirous that every other man shall be equally 
healthy. But the man of modern scholarship desires all 
other men to possess equal scholarship, that life may be 
interesting to himself and to his fellows. 

That in American life this philanthropic scholarship 
would long ere now have won all the people but for the 
hordes of the immigrating ignorant is probable. That de- 
spite the multitude of the ignorant, scholarship is making 
headway is significant. Indeed, the very presence of the 
many unlearned has quickened its spirit while burdening 
its back. Millions there yet are of the black, the brown, 
the yellow, and the white who know not yet the great 
doctrines of liberty in law, of opportunity through school- 
ing, of equality by regarding as well as enforcing rights ; 

1 Nations that do not love their children and their scholars are invariably unprogressive 
and typically undemocratic. The measure of progressiveness may be found in the love of 
school and home. Neglect of children and of scholars characterizes all static and degenerate 
populations. 



THE GRADED PUBLIC SCHOOL 225 

but American scholarship, expressing itself in the school 
universal, is to win them all. 

The building of the school universal began ages ago by 
the making and the collecting of its materials. But of all 
that which preceded the year 1850 I have little to say. 

1. The first characteristic of the universal school began 
to manifest itself ages ago, when people came together for 
study. This was the college, the collecting together. 

2. The second characteristic was its gathering and its 
dispensing of knowledge. 

These are the essentials of the school ; by definition, they 
make a school. For the school is a relationship between 
the one who knows fact and truth and the one who, 
desiring to learn fact and truth, repairs to the wise man 
for instruction. To the teacher, school is crxoXrj, leisure ; 
to the learner, it is studiMm^ effort. Whence we may 
learn that he who finds it hard to teach does not yet know ; 
or the hardship is in externals, as having too many to 
teach, or being confined to narrow or base surroundings 
and materials. 

3. The third characteristic of the school universal is its 
gradation of the learners. Gradation was the result of 
the discovery of a great principle, very slowly and very 
unwisely applied. Nor, in fact, do we yet know how to 
apply it correctly. We grade by proficiency in studies 
and in exercises. A result is that we have in the same 
class children of different ages and maturity of mind. We 
are as yet unable to provide in our elementary schools for 
those children who can do a little work well, but who fail 
when they undertake many things. The principle of gra- 
dation is sound, but needs further development.^ 

* Gradation should not proceed to division. Separating all youth into two classes, the 
one to study books chiefly, the other to learn the manual arts, would tend to social caste and 
to all its intolerable evils. 



226 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

4. The fourth characteristic of the school universal is 
that it is public. In America, this means that any persons 
may visit its sessions, that any parents may send their chil- 
dren to it free of cost, that it is owned by the public and 
maintained at public cost, and that its control is vested 
in a board directly or indirectly selected -by the voting citi- 
zens and responsible to them. So prominent is this charac- 
teristic of the modern school that it is known as the public 
school. Yet this characteristic is no more distinctive his- 
torically than is any one of several others. Of the modern 
school as a public institution, it must be remembered that 
it is not really the publicity that the citizens have in mind, 
but the assumption of the cost by the public. 

5. The fifth characteristic of the modern school is that 
the education it offers is free of expense to the scholars. 
This means that the building is provided at the cost of the 
community ; that furniture, apparatus, books, and supplies 
are furnished, and that the teachers and janitors are paid 
from the proceeds of a general tax. Whether this freedom 
from expense by which intelligence is made as free as the 
air we breathe, is good, may be debated. It is undoubtedly 
true that a better argument can be made for free public 
land than for free public schools, but that argument, though 
interesting, and calculated to enforce the argument for free 
education, would be a digression herein. 

6. The sixth characteristic of the modern school is 
that it is common. It is being extended everywhere. So 
common is it that we may almost call it universal. No 
child is shut away from its advantages. In an age when 
there are no bondsmen and no slaves, this general presence 
of the school is a natural result of democracy. 

7. The seventh characteristic of the modern school is 
that its course has been extended through many years, so 



THE GRADED PUBLIC SCHOOL 227 

that it has attractions to offer to all children and youth. 
In many States of the Union, the modern school begins 
with the kindergarten and ends with the post graduate 
work of the university. 

8. The eighth characteristic of the modern school is that 
it is taught by experts. A profession of teaching has 
arisen to take control of the schools by right of superior 
service. This quality of expertness of teaching in the free 
public school is not so common as to be universal, but the 
schools characterized by it are increasing in number. In 
the schools taught by professional teachers and managed 
by professional educators, two great improvements are 
secured : the time of the child is saved because more 
rapid progress is made; and there are fewer children 
discouraged and driven out of school by want of proper 
assistance in their intellectual efforts. The professional- 
ization of teaching and of administration is undoubtedly 
one of the most important matters at issue in modern 
American education. 

9. The ninth characteristic of the modern school is that 
it is housed in a scientifically constructed building, and that 
its students are cared for with scientific skill. The modern 
schoolhouse of the advanced type is built by an architect 
in consultation with an educator, and both understand the 
proper construction of schoolhouses. Provision is made for 
the actual grade of students who attend. The high school is 
not like a primary school, and kindergartens and assembly 
halls are not neglected in the latter. There are systematic 
and adequate arrangements for unfailing ventilation, for 
perfect sanitation, for good lighting, and for ingress and 
egress. Individual wardrobes are supplied. The desks, 
if desks are used at all, are adjustable. There are class 
libraries, and there are comfortable reading rooms, play 



228 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

rooms with gymnastic apparatus, a museum, and a garden 
for spring and summer.^ 

10. The tenth characteristic of the modem school is its 
democratic spirit. It exists to open the doors of opportu- 
nity to any and to all. Its purpose is preparation for life 
and yet more life. ** I came that ye might have life, and 
that ye might have it more abundantly," said the Master 
of us all. The modern school does not exist that it may 
impose burdens, but that it may strengthen for burden- 
bearing. This new spirit, new because forever young, 
transforms the school from a prison for drill, or from a 
hospital for cure, into a laboratory for the development of 
minds. The modern school, with its day classes, with 
its evening lectures, and with its variety of profitable in- 
struction day and evening, has the power to serve young 
and old, serving even the best and wisest by affording them 
an opportunity to utilize their goodness and wisdom in 
service. Gladness in giving and in receiving is the secret 
of all happiness, for those who hate to give or to receive 
are the unhappiest of all mortals. 

11. The eleventh characteristic of the fine modern 
school is that it utilizes the best qualities of both men 
and women as teachers. It is useless to discuss whether 
men or women make the most successful teachers : both 
are needed in every good school. One sex cannot edu- 
cate both sexes. Women are more valuable than men 
for certain purposes, and men are more valuable than 
women for others : they are excellent critics and assistants 
of one another. 

Such, in a brief sketch, are the foundation principles 
of American free common education and the main char- 
acteristics of the modern schools, "up to date," as the 

1 See my " Ideal School," a series of papers published in the School Journal^ New York. 



THE GRADED PUBLIC SCHOOL 229 

phrase is.^ By means of these standards we may judge 
any school. In these times, which are decidedly better 
in the matter of education than any earlier times, every 
one and any one, whether professionally qualified or not, 
criticises any school as of right. Nor can we deny the 
right in this age of democracy, nor would we deny it, for 
with all its faults democracy is a distinct advance upon 
any earlier form and spirit of society. Schools, like all 
other institutions of the State, are subject to criticism. This 
criticism is given both by the expert and by the inexpert ; 
by the professional critic and by the general public. 

How shall the professional educator judge a school ? 
To answer this, I imagine a recently elected school 
superintendent visiting a school of his city for the first 
time. He may observe and investigate the school in 
an order and fashion indicated by the following ques- 
tions : — 

1. Location : Is the neighborhood thickly built up? Has the school- 
house a playground? Is it set far back from the noisy street? Has it 
air and light upon all sides? The answer tells the foresight of the 
board of education that bought the site. 

2. Nature of the neighborhood : Are the houses single or in blocks? 
Of frame, brick, or stone? The answer gives the clew to the economic 
conditions of the parents. 

3. Size of the building: How many stories in height is it? How 
many class rooms does it contain ? How many other rooms ? 

4. Material and time when built? An old and substantial building 
in good repair speaks well for a community, where a new and poor one 
speaks badly for it. . 

5. Interior arrangements : — 

a. Are the stairways numerous and safe? 

b. Is there an assembly hall? 

1 As the past lives in the present, so frequently there is in the present a fact that belongs 
essentially to the future. There are, here and there in the modern school, indications symp- 
tomatic of the universal school that is to be. 



230 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

A school without an assembly hall is not a college of students, but a 
mere accumulation of classes. 

c. Are there rooms for manual training ? for gymnastics ? for the 
teachers? for a general school library? 

d. Are the rooms sufficiently large? Are they overcrowded? A 
class of thirty is reasonable, of forty is large, of fifty is too large, of 
sixty is sinful. Self-respecting, child-loving teachers of experience 
who can get other positions (and no other teachers are worthy to be 
called entirely professional) resign rather than try to teach over fifty 
children. Competent superintendents see that their boards provide a 
second teacher when a class runs beyond fifty students. Every child 
needs at least twenty square feet of floor space. 

e. What are the provisions for blackboard ? Is there enough black- 
board? Is it of good quality and color? 

f. Are there any cross lights? The lighting of a schoolroom ought 
to come either from the left side or from the left and rear. When it 
comes from the left and rear, one half of the wall either of left or rear 
should be without windows, so that the light comes in a block from 
a corner. 

g. Are the desks and chairs adjustable? If they are not adjustable, 
are at least twenty per cent adjustable ? Every child should have a 
desk fairly suited to his size. 

h. Has the class room a bookcase or cabinet for library books? If 
so, what is the nature of the equipment? 

i. Is there a principal's office? Is there a room for supplies and 
text-books? Is there a school library? 

j. Are there rooms with wardrobes for the teachers ? Every school- 
house ought to be considered a home for all its occupants for the day- 
time. 

k. What is the provision for the children's outer clothes? Chil- 
dren's wardrobes should be separated by a brick wall from the class 
room. Every child should have a separate compartment for his 
clothes, and the wardrobe should be well ventilated and lighted. 

/. What is the system for providing fresh air and for taking out 
foul air fi-om the building? Every schoolroom should have its entire 
contents of air changed every five or six minutes. There are at least 
three good systems : first, that of a fan to draw in air and of a fan to 
draw it out; second, that of a fan to draw in air, and of a heated 
exhaust flue to draw it out ; third, that of liberal inlets operated by 

/ 

] 



THE GRADED PUBLIC SCHOOL 23 1 

gravity, and of a fan to draw the air out. The gravity system alone is 
insufficient because it fails to operate in mild weather when fresh air is 
most needed. 

7n. Is the school a full grammar, elementary, primary, or high school ? 
This should be observed at once, — it will indeed probably be known 
before the visitor goes to the school. This factor of the use of schools 
is important to laymen as well as to professional men, because it tells 
whether or not there should be male teachers. Every grammar school 
ought to have several male teachers, and in every coeducational high 
school at least half of the teachers ought to be men, — the men (not 
merely young men, scarcely more than boys) in the higher grades, and 
the women (not all very young) in all grades. A complete grammar 
or high school taught only by women indicates both parsimony and 
incompetence in the conduct of the schools of a community. 

n. Are the teachers of a good variety in age? Every staff ought to 
have old, middle-aged, and young teachers, particularly the last. The 
young teachers of the present time are better prepared for teaching 
than were the teachers of an earlier generation. 

o. What is the general style of the teachers? Are they healthy and 
cheerful ? To judge by their appearance, do they seem fairly well paid ? 
Are they dressed in good taste ? Where the teachers of a school are 
buoyant, there it is safe to say the children are well taught. 

p. Is the principal a man or woman? Has he (or she) had a really 
adequate preparation, that is, an educational preparation essentially 
broader than that of the teachers ? Or is he simply a class teacher in a 
higher office? 

q. Are the higher grades taught by the departmental plan ? May 
the teachers reasonably be called specialists ? Are they enthusiastic, 
both for the children and in their subjects ? 

r. The visitor is now ready to make specific inquiries into the edu- 
cational condition of the school. In a good class room, he will give, 
if authorized to do so, oral tests of a reasonable nature in various sub- 
jects. It is extremely desirable to avoid asking questions that are 
purely general or purely detailed, since both classes of questions 
are unfair. It is also undesirable to ask questions of the dass as a 
whole, since by this method only the bright are inclined to respond. 
A good device is to have the children number themselves, seriatim, 
then to question them by numbers at random, and to pursue a topic in 
a series of questions asked of individuals. In carrying out this test, it 



232 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

is well to ask for samples of the daily written work of thiese pupils. It 
is desirable also to inspect the register of the daily attendance, since 
a high percentage of attendance indicates great interest in school 
going, and this in turn indicates a well-taught class. 

s. After this inspection has been carried on with reasonable 
thoroughness in several classes, the inspecting visitor is ready for a 
talk with the principal, who, when a fair-minded person, will probably 
disclose the strength and weakness of the school. By an inspection 
carried on along these lines, and renewed two or three times within a 
month or two, the expert visitor will arrive at a fairly correct knowl- 
edge of the school. In all criticism of teachers and principals, it is 
well to carry the double standard of schools in mind ; that is, the in- 
struction and the discipline. It is well to remember that where the 
instruction is good the order is likely to be good, for the instruction 
is the cause of interest and attention, which are the basis of good order. 
On the other hand, at the beginning of the year, order is more impor- 
tant than the instruction, since, until there is sufficient order to permit 
the giving of instruction, there can be no systematic school work done. 
In a good school, there is neither oppression of the children by repres- 
sion of their physical activity, nor is there any harassing of the teachers 
by noise and confusion. 

The expert in judging classes does not need very much 
time. He may learn by a glance the ages, manner, and 
dress of the school children, desks, etc. He needs a little 
more time to judge the culture of the teachers, but that is 
told in large part by the voice and the carriage. 

In such a fashion as that which is outlined, a rapid test 
may be made. A thorough test of the school is a much 
more important matter. 

To make such a test the following plan may be car- 
ried out : The examiner may make a set of written 
test questions in all the main subjects. These may be 
given to the classes by teachers assigned to them from 
other classes. The papers of the children may all be 
marked by numbers or by fictitious names. The examina- 
tion marks should be given by still a different teacher. All 



THE GRADED PUBLIC SCHOOL 233 

oral subjects should be examined by visiting teachers or 
principals who do not know the children. By such a thor- 
ough test as this, one may arrive at competent knowledge, 
based upon facts impartially gathered, of the standing of 
the school compared with other schools of a similar grade 
and character. The marks of the children may all be 
averaged together, and the proficiency of the teacher may 
be judged upon this one basis, which should by no means 
be the only basis. 

There are certain tests that should be made regularly. 

The first of these are of health and physique. With 
proper apparatus, the visiting supervisor, with or without 
the assistance of the teacher, may test the lung capacity, 
eyesight, hearing, and general condition of the children. 

Such a physical test ought to be made at least once a year. 

The medical inspection by a competent physician should be made 
monthly through the school, and, where the school numbers several 
hundred pupils, should be supplemented by daily visits to inspect such 
cases as may be referred to him by the principal. 

There ought also to be a test of the voices of the 
children. This may be made by the teacher with the 
supervisor of music. 

Such a voice test is an excellent correlative of the health 
test, since a good voice indicates sound health. 

As to the visits of the regular supervisor, their number 
and nature, everything depends upon the size of the 
school system, that is, the proportion of the numbers 
of teachers and supervisors. The visits of the school 
superintendent should be as frequent as possible, even 
if only a minute or two can be spared for each room. 
On the other hand, it is best for supervisors of special 
subjects to make few but thorough visits, rather than 
many of brief duration. 



234 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

No correction of any error made by a teacher in the 
course of her instruction should ever be given in the pres- 
ence of children. The quieter the manner of the super- 
visor, the better. As far as possible, the supervisor should 
not break sharply upon the normal atmosphere of the class 
room unless that atmosphere is very bad. Even in such a 
case, the good order enforced by the supervisor makes the 
bad order of the teacher even worse by contrast. Obvi- 
ously, the method employed by the supervisor in the visits 
will depend largely upon the subject. An art supervisor 
calls to see the results of the children's work and very 
likely to see a lesson given by the teacher. Occasionally 
the supervisor should give a lesson. 

Every supervisor should keep a daily record of visits and 
conversations, of lessons, of letters, and of all other affairs 
connected with his office. This may be the briefest memo- 
randum, or an elaborate statement. The values of this record 
are three in number. For the first, the supervisor himself 
knows definitely what he has done. He can review his 
own work by week, by term, or by year. For the second, 
he has practically an indisputable record for all sorts of 
matters. No superior authority can safely call him to 
account for dereliction of duty. No subordinate can safely 
complain of comparative neglect. For the third, he has a 
basis for recommendations to the board of education, or 
to support recommendations of others. Such a diary of 
duties done corresponds with the merchant's bookkeeping, 
and is not less important. Whether a superintendent or 
special supervisor should give subordinates copies from time 
to time of his own entries upon personal or official records 
may be debatable. The reasons for giving copies of the 
records or for permitting access to original records outweigh 
in most particular instances the objections to so doing. 



THE GRADED PUBLIC SCHOOL 235 

Various forms of reports by supervisors to the super- 
intendent may be desired. Undoubtedly, such reports 
take time, and may be too elaborate. But a brief weekly, 
or at least monthly, resume of visits made, and of criticisms 
or opinions, not to exceed, in the latter case, a thousand 
words, is very desirable. A committee on instruction of 
a board of education may find a file of such resumes very 
helpful and very convincing in many difficult and otherwise 
doubtful matters. 

Every graded public school needs a permanent record of 
the register of pupils and of their record at school. In 
these times, the register may best be kept by the " card 
index system." ^ 

The question of marks is debatable. It arises in every 
community. A'^change in the marking system from letters 
to words or from words to letters, from words to per cents, 
or from per cents to letters, usually for a time affects 
favorably the work of the students, because without change 
there can be no life ; and though not all change is progress, 
there is no progress without change.^ 

The modern school is the great instrument of society for 
the prevention, avoidance, and removal of poverty. The 
causes of poverty are ignorance, disease, isolation, fraud, 

1 See Appendixes for all these matters. 

2 It is not within the purview of this book to discuss thoroughly pedagogical questions. 
I state my own preferences in the Appendix. The points of importance are that studies or 
exercises taking much time should be given a higher value than others in determining or in 
influencing promotion, and that daily work should be considered as well as tests and exami- 
nations. It is my own opinion that no final examinations should ever be given in the com- 
mon schools except as offering an opportunity to make up a year of failure or a period of 
absence. 

In view of the great difficulties that many pupils of mediocre ability encounter in public 
schools, a plan has been devised by Superintendent John Kennedy, by which one half the 
time of each pupil is devoted to individual study with the assistance of the teacher when neces- 
sary. This Batavia plan can be carried on either with two teachers in a room, one who 
devotes entire time to giving recitations, and the other, entire time to giving individual in- 
struction, or by one teacher in a room, who devotes one half her time to giving recitations 
and the other half to giving individual instruction. 



236 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

and servitude to privilege or to tyranny. As far as disease, 
fraud, and tyranny are preventable, they are the results of 
ignorance ; but they are not always preventable by man's 
present knowledge of Nature and of human nature. There 
are no poor persons whose poverty may not be accounted 
for by one or more of these causes. Therefore, to promote 
intelligence, association, health, honesty, and independence 
is to remove the causes of poverty, the chief ill of human 
life. 

Compulsory attendance upon school is now legally required in many 
States and is actually enforced in several. The need for it arises from 
three different causes : First, the indifference of parents to the welfare 
of their children. Second, the parsimony and ignorance of the citizens 
in failing to provide good teachers and interesting school courses to at- 
tract and to hold the pupils. Third, the undeniable mental or moral or 
physical defects or derangements of certain children. It follows that a 
regular attendance officer (not a policeman) or a body of such officers 
should be employed to bring pupils to school and to keep them there ; 
that a first-class school should be maintained; that for the defective 
and incorrigible there should be provided ungraded classes or reform 
home schools ; and that parents who break the law should be fined or 
imprisoned. In one case in a hundred or two hundred, the community 
ought to provide the bare necessaries of life to help a widow or an in- 
valid father. The compulsory age limits should be from seven to fif- 
teen or sixteen. 

To enforce compulsory education, thus bringing defective and in- 
corrigible children into the schools, but not to make special provision 
for them, is to discourage the attendance of sensitive, quiet children. 
It injures the ordinary school work without doing anything valuable for 
the incorrigibles ; and it tends to encourage the development of private 
schools, and to alienate the support of the public schools by the parents 
of the orderly but easily disturbed children. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE STATE SYSTEM AND THE DISTRICT SCHOOL 

For the purposes of administration and supervision the 
jurisdiction of the United States Bureau of Education may 
be ignored. Whether or not there should be more na- 
tional control of all American public schools than there is 
at present is a debatable question of such magnitude as 
properly to require a book by itself. At the present time, 
we are required to think almost exclusively of the State 
systems^ and of their subordinate districts, the city schools 
and the country schools. Between these two in most 
States is the township school. 

Whether or not there should be more State control of 
free public schools is at the present time scarcely a debat- 
able question. The tendency is decidedly in the direction 
of centralization, in the interests of efficiency and progress. 
For a well-developed educational system there might be 
the following organization : — 

I. A State board of education, of from seven to fifteen 
members well distributed through the State, appointed by 
the governor for a term of five or seven years, from two 
classes of eligible persons : First, not less than half should 
be either public school educators holding the highest State 

* Most of this book is concerned with a discussion of the questions involved in the admin- 
istration and supervision of the school systems of communities of from five to fifty thousand 
people. Nevertheless, for the complete view, it is necessary to consider briefly the State 
system as a whole, and the country school so far as it exists apart from cities. The State 
system and the country schools, now combined in union graded schools or in city systems, are 
among the weakest features in American free public education. 

237 



238 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

certificate, or presidents or professors of incorporated col- 
leges granting degrees. Second, present or former mem- 
bers of municipal boards of education who have served at 
least two years. These latter should have some conspicu- 
ous qualifications for the position, such as professional 
reputation in law, or medicine, or success in public office, 
or business success coupled with philanthropy.^ 

2. A State board of examiners of from three to five 
members, whose business it should be to make all rules 
and regulations for all kinds of teachers' certificates. This 
board should be composed exclusively of professional edu- 
cators, appointed by the State board of education. 

3. A State superintendent of public instruction, who 
should be secretary of the State board of education, and 
elected by it to his office. He should be ex officio a mem- 
ber of the board of examiners. He should hold the high- 
est State teacher's certificate before being appointed to 
his office, and have a tenure of at least five years. 

4. A body of county superintendents with jurisdiction 
over one or more counties, who should be appointed to 
their office by the State board of education. These men 
should hold the highest State certificate and should have 
tenure of office. 

5. A board of county examiners, who should have charge 
of certificating teachers for township and district schools. 
These examiners should themselves hold the highest 
State teacher's certificate. 

The question arises immediately as to what the relation 
of city, township, and district schools should be to the 

1 A State board of health without a physician upon it would be considered as an absurdity. 
Since the State board of education has no power to levy taxes and a great deal of power over 
professional matters, it should be regarded as a State council of education and should, there- 
fore, be composed partly of educational administrators, and partly of educational legislators. 
No stream can rise higher than its source. Such a board would be respected by the State 
legislature to which it would stand as an expert advisory commission. 



THE STATE SYSTEM AND DISTRICT SCHOOL 239 

State school system. For this relation the following plan 
is suggested : ^ — 

A State tax upon all property of not less than three 
mills per dollar. The total sum thus raised may be 
apportioned by the State superintendent as follows : — 

1 . For every properly certificated superintendent, and for every super- 
vising principal employed in city or town, 40 per cent of the salary paid. 

2. For every manual training teacher employed, or other specialist 
in subjects that the State wishes to encourage, 50 per cent of the salary 
paid. 

3. For every other teacher on the pay-roll of city, town, or district, 
33i P^J* cent of the salary paid, provided that no apportionment as 
above should be less than $600 for the superintendent, $300 for the 
manual training teacher, and $200 for the other teachers. 

Only by such encouragement as I have suggested will the poorer 
districts be able to employ first-class officers and teachers. 

4. The balance of the State money raised may be apportioned wisely 
pro rata among all the communities for days' attendance.^ 

The purpose of the foregoing plan is to strengthen the school admin- 
istration of particular municipalities and counties. One of the weak 
features of American education to-day seems to be along the line of 
supervision and administration. Thus, we seem to have better teachers 
than financial support or professional leadership for them. The remedy 
for this is to give the county superintendent more jurisdiction over the 
course of study and over the teachers. It would seem that these men 
should have jurisdiction coordinate with and not much less extended 
than that of the city superintendents. In other words, nominations for 
teachers and suggestions for listing text-books should emanate from 
them. They should have certain veto powers, subject to appeal to the 
State authorities. Upon this basis, and upon this alone, can rural edu- 
cation be made professional in its character. It is a most regrettable 
fact that to-day few county superintendents have been professionally 
prepared for their office and are exercising its duties skilfully .3 

1 This is substantially the plan adopted and now successfully carried on in the State of 
New Jersey. 

2 The State of New Jersey provides that all money raised in a county shall go back to 
that same county. Consequently, some counties have available four cents a day for attend- 
ance, while others have much less. 

s It is impossible in these pages to treat adequately this subject, which is so admirably 



240 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

The State school systems, like the local school ^sterns, as they 
exist in America, illustrate the undue preponderance of the legislative 
power that is characteristic of democracy. This was the reaction from 
European executive tyranny. Said James Madison in the Consti- 
tutional Convention of 1787, "The tendency of repubUcan govern- 
ments is to aggrandize the legislature at the expense of the other 
departments. The executives of the State are little more than ciphers : 
the legislatures are omnipotent. The founders of our republic seem 
never to have recollected the danger from legislative usurpations, which 
by assembling all power in the same hands, must lead to the same 
tyranny as is threatened by executive usurpations." Wilson of Penn- 
sylvania said, " No adequate self-defensive power has been granted to 
the executive or the judicial departments." Judge Story upon the 
same subject declared, " There is a constitutional necessity of arming 
the weaker branch, as the executive unquestionably is, with powers for 
its own defense." Of all departments, that of education most needs to 
have a strong executive branch because it requires experts to perform 
its functions. Yet, in fact, no department of the State government 
more completely illustrates the weakness of the executive than that of 
education, with its board of education in almost entire control of State 
and county superintendents. 

The district school in America to this day enrolls a very 
considerable proportion of all the school children of the 
country. It still continues (despite the growth of the 
cities) to be the chief instrument of modern American 
education. Even at the present time, most of the people 
of our country live in communities with less than four 
thousand people. It is true that in many communities of 
less than four thousand population there are schools that 
may not properly be called district or rural schools ; but 
it is often overlooked that in many towns and even cities 
there are isolated schools that may properly be called dis- 
trict schools. 

discussed in Seeley's " School Management." Many points are touched upon in this chapter 
mainly because of their bearing upon the discussion in other chapters and upon the general 
argument of the book. 



THE STATE SYSTEM AND DISTRICT SCHOOL 24 1 

In its literal meaning, a district school is simply the 
school of a certain section of country set off from other 
sections and organized as a school district, a separate gov- 
ernmental jurisdiction. But in its popular meaning, a dis- 
trict school is a country school of one or two teachers and 
not closely graded. In this sense, a school with one 
teacher for children of various ages, from five to twenty, 
is a district school. A school with two teachers for sixty 
or eighty children is virtually a district school, even when 
the children are separated into two divisions, a higher and 
a lower. The line that divides the district from the graded 
school cannot be drawn definitely. But a school with three 
teachers, lowest, intermediate, and highest, is scarcely a 
district school, in the popular meaning of that term. 

The district school has the merits of its quality. In it, 
practically every child is taught individually. The groups 
are necessarily small and numerous. The teacher adapts 
the work to the powers, needs, and interests of each child. 
Per contrUy the amount of time that can be given to each 
individual is very small, and the length of each recitation is 
very brief. Only a limited range of subjects may be intro- 
duced. ( For a school of forty children ranging in age from 
six to fourteen years, all in the care of one teacher, there 
may be provided a program of some twenty-five periods 
of recitations and exercises within the school day of five 
hours. This means that the average length of each lesson 
is about ten minutes. The arrangement of the program 
must depend upon the ages and requirements of the chil- 
dren, the size and convenience of the class room, and the 
abundance of books, supplies, and other equipment and ap- 
paratus. In such a school, it is generally wise to grade 
by not over three subjects, and better by two ; namely, 
English and arithmetic. The three subjects may be 



242 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

English, arithmetic, and geography, the last to be used as 
the core of the Nature study and the correlative of history. 
Such a school should have the following studies and exer- 
cises in addition to these three : music, writing, spelling, 
physiology, drawing, and history. Obviously, not all these 
subjects should be taught to all the children, nor should all 
of them be pursued at the same time. When each primary 
child has three lessons a day with busy work in the interims, 
and each intermediate child has four lessons, and each 
grammar or advanced child has five daily, the school is 
doing very well. 

In arranging the program, it is desirable that the reci- 
tations should be followed by study periods. In some 
exercises, such as music and drawing, all the pupils may 
be brought together. In certain other subjects, such as 
writing and spelling, the pupils may be divided into two 
divisions. However, in this matter of grouping, special 
conditions must control. 

The district school teacher is instructor, administrator, 
and disciplinarian. Where the school is composed chiefly 
of young children, a woman will have better success than a 
man. When the district school includes many large boys, 
it is a rare woman who can succeed, both in instruction and 
control. However, she is just as likely to succeed as a man, 
unless the man is worth a much larger salary than the 
woman receives. 

However, it is not so much with these aspects that I 
wish to deal, as it is with the relation of the school to the 
community and to the nation. As generally administered 
by the school trustees, or board of trustees, the district 
school, in certain respects, is a menace to the welfare of 
cities, and indeed to that of the country districts them- 
selves. Too often the teacher is considered as a hireling, 



THE STATE SYSTEM AND DISTRICT SCHOOL 243 

and is employed for a term or at most for a year. The 
program of the school children is simply a succession of 
years of instruction, sometimes good and sometimes bad. 
Building one year upon another cannot properly be accom- 
plished, since the new teacher does not know what the 
former teacher taught, and does not know what to expect 
from the pupils. Boys and girls as they grow in years 
lose confidence in the value of schools, and " finish " their 
education when but imperfectly prepared for life. Occa- 
sionally, a boy of more than average strength of mind or 
of character survives this purposeless course and becomes 
a useful citizen in country or in city, where he praises the 
district school, investing it with the charm of all the expe- 
riences of his youth. It may be admitted that such a 
process of education tends to develop self-reliance, but 
otherwise, it is not especially valuable. Since the school 
is the chief fountain of intelligence in a country district, 
and since most pupils leave school at twelve or fourteen 
years of age, few country-bred persons possess sufficient 
knowledge to transact successfully the business, individual 
and social, of modern American city life. The menace of 
the rural school, thus taught by a succession of teachers, 
is in relation to the city, and special. The country is con- 
stantly supplying experienced teachers eager to take low 
salaries in towns and cities, but who, when carefully ex- 
amined, are found really to know nothing of the art of 
teaching. 

Very often such teachers are normal school graduates, notwithstand- 
ing which fact they accept eagerly in the cities salaries which city young 
men and young women know are altogether insufficient for their sup- 
port. Five or six hundred dollars a year seems very large to a country 
boy or girl, while the city youth knows that such an income provides 
only a hall bedroom and boarding-house fare, in short, such living 
accommodations as no teacher should be compelled to accept. 



244 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Since the city is constantly recruited from the country, 
many citizens regard the city schools as centers of extrava- 
gance and the city teachers as overpaid and underworked. 
Until the requirements to teach in cities are increased to 
the professional standard, until this standard is maintained, 
and until the emigration of country people other than 
teachers to the cities has ceased, the available supply of 
country teachers will continue to be used by ignorant and 
designing boards of education as a club to beat the city 
teachers into a reluctant acceptance of low salaries. 

Nothing of this is to be taken as condemnation of the exceptional 
" born " teacher, who is discovered in the country. In these times, such 
a teacher is the first person in all his or her circle of people to discover 
that skilful teaching requires a body of knowledge that may be drawn 
upon in instruction. As soon as possible after this discovery, the born 
teacher posts oflf to normal school or college in order to acquire this 
knowledge. 

As a preparation for executive work, a year or two of district school 
experience is invaluable to a teacher before or after normal school or 
college. If the experience comes before the normal school or college, 
the teacher has the practical knowledge of school needs which enables 
him, or her, to appreciate the instruction. On the other hand, if 
the experience is immediately after the course in higher education, the 
teacher is thereby enabled to practice, in the light of principles, the 
great art of self-direction. It is an unfortunate fact that a few graduates 
of college or normal schools fail to develop properly because of too close 
supervision ; this hampers the young teacher's eager activities. In the 
district school the teacher finds ample room for the exercise of all quali- 
ties, physical, moral, and intellectual. Were it possible to secure for 
all district schools normal and college graduates with intelligent super- 
vision, a wonderful revolution would thereby be effected that would 
operate wholly for the good of the American people. Country children 
would find new inspiration in their daily lives. 

Notwithstanding all that can be said in favor of the 
district school, its advantages are so inferior to those of 
the graded school that a great movement is now taking 



THE STATE SYSTEM AND DISTRICT SCHOOL 245 

place to transport country children to the town schools. 
This is called rural transportation. By this means children 
are brought in vehicles from the farms for miles around 
into central or union schools, taught and managed by ex- 
perienced teachers. 

A world of romance attaches itself to " the little red 
schoolhouse," but it is giving place to the better modern 
graded school. 

The great lack of the district school (and I may say of 
the district school board also) is the lack of competent 
skilled supervision. It is often true of the members of a 
school board in the country that they are well meaning 
and would do the right thing if they knew how, but that 
they are ignorant and incompetent. And it is often true 
of the country teacher that she is earnest and conscien- 
tious and welcomes the help she needs to make her work 
efficient. The most hopeful thing in rural education is 
the rapid increase of township supervision, of rural graded 
schools, and of transportation. By means of these things 
the rural school may be brought to share in the wonderful 
improvement that has come to our city and town schools 
during the last twenty-five years, largely through the 
development of school supervision.^ 

1 The practice in many States of appointing text-book commissions to decide what text- 
books shall be used in all the schools has certain things in its favor, of which the chief ar« 
economy and uniformity. But on the whole, the method is to be reprehended by the educational 
profession, chiefly because its tendency is against the development of individuality in school 
systems. This individuality is the real secret of the progress of American education because 
it encourages experiments. When commissions are appointed for the selection of text-books 
for the schools, it is very important that school superintendents and other practical edu- 
cators actually in school positions should constitute at least three fourths of the membership. 
It is also desirable that there should be options in all important subjects, that is, two text- 
books in each of the following ; arithmetic, grammar, language, etc. 



CHAPTER X 

THE PRIVATE SCHOOL 

In modern American education, besides the free common 
public schools, which constitute the main subject of this 
book, there are private schools of various kinds and grades. 
The term " private " is used in contradistinction from 
public in the American sense of free to the public.^ In 
this sense, all schools in which any fees are exacted as a 
prerequisite for attendance, and those into which are ad- 
mitted only such pupils as the schools choose upon rules 
determined by themselves, are private schools. They in- 
clude schools without endowments and wholly dependent 
upon tuition fees, and schools with endowments and either 
in whole or in part independent of tuition fees. In these 
meanings of the terms " private " and " public," the State 
universities are public, while such universities ^ as Harvard 
and Leland Stanford are private, and the high schools are 
public, while Girard College and the Phillips Academies are 
private. 

For the purposes of this very brief discussion of the 
administration of private schools, they may be divided into 
the proprietary schools without endowments and the fidu- 
ciary schools with endowments. The discussion will be 
confined to those points in which such schools differ edu- 
cationally from free common schools. A different discus- 

* Public, In the English sense, means open to the public on equal terms. 

* For a discussion of the administration of higher institutions, see that admirable book, 
" College Administration," by President Charles F. Thwing, Western Reserve University. 

246 



THE PRIVATE SCHOOL 247 

sion of private schools may be made by grouping them as 
day and boarding schools, giving in all four kinds of private 
schools, viz. : — 

1. Proprietary, day 

2. Fiduciary, day 

3. Proprietary, boarding 

4. Fiduciary, boarding 



■ schools. 



The proprietary school is an educational enterprise run 
for financial returns to the proprietor, whose purpose is to 
furnish good educational opportunities for the money re- 
ceived. Its value to the pupils depends upon the charac- 
ter and ability of the proprietor. The proprietary school 
owned by a man, or by a partnership composed of men, of 
sound judgment, of high ideals, of wide and thorough 
scholarship, and of energy, and patronized by a clientele 
of cultivated and wealthy persons, may be made a nobler 
and a more effective instrument of education than any 
endowed or public school, upon three conditions : — 

First, all undesirable pupils may be excluded so that the 
body of students may become of high grade in character 
and ability. Then begins a natural process of selection by 
the development among the pupils of a right school tra- 
dition. The pupils themselves are glad to see desirable 
companions admitted and undesirable ones rejected. 

Second, large salaries for instructors may be provided 
for relatively small classes of pupils. 

Third, owing to the simplicity of the chief punishment, 
exclusion from the school, the discipline may be made 
perfect.' 

The first effort of the owner of such a school must be to 
fill it and to create a " waiting list." This ambition affects 
equally the kindergarten or the academy that is privately 
owned. The private school of this kind must have a 



248 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

standard number of pupils, whether twenty oi* two hun- 
dred, and enlargement of accommodation must be resorted 
to only upon long and thorough consideration. Vacancies 
must be filled promptly and without cut in price. The 
life of the proprietor is necessarily at a high tension. 
One poor teacher may work irreparable harm. One bad 
boy may equally injure the school. Summary and quiet 
removals are imperative. The discharge of the poor 
teacher and the expulsion of the bad boy are as good 
advertisements as the success of graduates in higher insti- 
tutions or in business or in society. 

The proprietor of the private school, not only upon 
grounds of the higher morality, but also upon those of 
business expediency, should be guided and governed by 
such principles as these, namely : — 

1. To regard all parents as clients and all pupils as 
charges or wards, and to insist upon being regarded by 
parents as an attorney and counselor in education, and 
by all pupils as a friendly but authoritative guardian. By 
thus establishing and maintaining his position, the pro- 
prietor establishes his independence and maintains his 
self-respect. 

2. To aim at permanent financial success and to use 
every reputable means to secure it, making such success 
the paramount object. The unforgivable thing in business 
is failure : in the educational business of a private school, 
two things are unforgivable, success with dishonor, and 
financial failure for any cause. To secure business success, 
a school proprietor must often make immediate educational 
results secondary. 

3. To employ as teachers only such as are attractive 
in appearance and agreeable in personality, naturally 
loyal and not ambitious in the sense of desiring personal 



THE PRIVATE SCHOOL 249 

success, industrious, strong, youthful in spirits, and not too 
shrewd in insight into human nature, honest, and with a 
high sense of honor. A successful private school teacher, 
an employee of the owner, may secure a high salary, a 
much higher salary than those receive who are employed 
in corresponding public school positions. But such persons 
are never of the personal temper or disposition of the suc- 
cessful public school teachers. A private school centers 
about the proprietor, who is chief in all things. A public 
school has no center, but offers several equal relationships, 
— to the principal, the superintendent, the board of educa- 
tion, the body of parents. The proprietary private school 
is a despotism, a despotism that is like a great and affec- 
tionate patriarchal family sometimes, but often a despo- 
tism in which many members of the school household are 
earnestly longing for escape. 

4. To give the best instruction that his revenues will 
allow to his students in relation to their individual needs. 
The one great feature of the private as compared with 
the public free school is the individual instruction.^ Even 
though the stay of the individual pupil in the private school 
is usually short, the proprietor ought to have a record of his 

1 It is not within the scope of the purpose of this book to discuss the relative advantages 
and disadvantages of private and of public schools. The suggestions in this chapter concern 
only the administration of private schools. 

A large difference generally existing between private schools and public schools is that the 
private school, whether secondary in character or not, has for its leading purpose the prepa- 
ration of boys or girls for college. It is perfectly true that a very considerable number of the 
children in the private school do not go to college, but in many parts of our country the 
proportion of college preparatory students in the grades of the private school that corre- 
spond with the highest two or three grammar classes or the high school, is very much larger 
than is the proportion in the public school. Probably a majority of the parents of the boys 
who go to the private school expect to send their sons to college or other higher institution 
of learning. This affects in a considerable degree the administrative problem of the private 
school, especially of the private secondary school. For one thing, it necessitates the employ- 
ment of a faculty composed of college graduates; and in the second place, It necessitates the 
organization of the work in the private school along the lines laid down by the entrance 
examinations of colleges. 



250 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

age, intellectual acquirements, physical condition, — weight, 
height, eyesight, hearing, strength, — upon entrance and 
upon half-year intervals. Quite as much as the principal 
of the public school, the proprietor of the private school 
should be a practical student of children and youth, a 
working psychologist. 

5. To interest himself in loco parentis in the whole wel- 
fare of the student. The head master of high ideals and 
fine personality becomes a radiant influence, and with his 
teachers and his own family, especially his wife, touches 
the lives of all the pupils in the class room, upon the play- 
ground, in the dormitory. Child study has nowhere else 
such an opportunity as in the boarding school, whose 
head master ought to observe accurately, with the eye of 
affectionate interest, and to express his conclusions in vital 
methods. Even the family life of the boy or of the girl 
can scarcely be as intimately devoted to his or her welfare 
as can the boarding school life. A virile sympathy of 
relation — the approach that a boy recognizes as under- 
standing him in both his strength and his weakness — 
often works a miracle with the "idler" and the "bluffer." 

This principle applies equally to the proprietor of the 
day school and to the proprietor of the boarding school.^ 

The proprietary day school differs in the concerns of 
management from the proprietary boarding school in two 
important respects. The proprietor of the day school lives 
in the community of the parents, with any of whom he 

1 To affirm this principle is to rule out of the profession of education all persons who 
advertise to teach their students so much knowledge within a given period of time. To illus* 
trate: The man who advertised in a certain city in 1903 that he prepared boys for college 
and wasted no time on physical training or Bible reading, or anything not explicitly con- 
nected with college entrance examinations, was not an educator, and evidently was very 
anxious to have the fact known. Similar illustrations of inculcating knowledge without 
" wasting time " may be seen frequently in the advertisements and corroborated in the man- 
agement of " business colleges." 



THE PRIVATE SCHOOL 25 1 

may consult at their homes or in his office whenever he 
desires. His discipline has such support as the parents, 
by their character and time, are able to give. He cannot 
isolate the pupils from their home environment, which 
may be good or may be colorless, mischievous, or evil. 

The fact that the parents send their child to a day school may indicate 
any one of several facts, namely : — 

1 . The public schools may be very poor in quality. 

2. Whether the public schools be good or bad, the child may be mis- 
chievous, malicious, defective, sickly, or otherwise not sufficiently normal 
to be able to go to the free school and to stay there. 

3. The parents have sufficient property or income to afford to pay 
for special educational opportunities. 

4. The parents may desire to separate their children from the public 
school children, because of any one of several reasons : pride, culture, 
ambition, discouragement. 

The proprietor comes into personal relation with the 
parents upon many matters ; and he must have a keen in- 
sight into the characters of adults as well as of children. 

In a second respect, the position of the owner of a day 
school differs from that of the owner of a boarding school. 
The former has not, while the latter has, control of the 
pupils' time out of the school hall. The burden upon the 
proprietor of the boarding school is very great; it is a 
burden of additional business, to furnish and care for 
rooms and meals, and a burden of additional responsibility, 
to see that the pupils' out-of-school time is well spent. In 
this respect, the opportunity of the proprietor of the day 
school is less. While he may greatly influence the parents 
and the pupils in regard to the use of afternoons and of 
evenings, of holidays and of vacations, he has no more 
authority in these matters than a public school principal. 

It appears upon the face of the foregoing discussion 
that the successful proprietor of a day school must be a 



252 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

skilful observer of human nature, a good judge of teachers, 
and a competent business man. The successful proprietor 
of a boarding school must be an unusually expert business 
man and decidedly a student of education.^ 

Midway between the private school that is entirely de- 
pendent upon the payments for the school privileges and 
the free public school is the private school with an endow- 
ment. In an economic sense, the free school is an ** en- 
dowed school," the endowments being certain receipts 
from current taxes and froni bond issues granted by the 
people of the district or of the State, or, in their respective 
parts, by both. It is desirable to have a clear view of the 
exact position, in the economic world, of the three forms of 
school that are under discussion in this chapter and else- 
where in this book. Of the wealth produced by a nation 
utilizing its labor, land, and capital, we may make the fol- 
lowing analysis : — 

1. Wages for labor and salaries for services. 

2. Taxes for government. 

3. Rent of land. 

4. Interest upon capital. 

5. Profits for the managers of business. 

Of these items, for the purposes of this discussion, we 
may consider that everything except wages represents a 
portion of the surplus annually earned. This is not 
exactly true, since the wages of certain employees exceed 

1 Grave arguments are sometimes heard as to whether private or public schools require, 
in their executive heads, men of the greater ability and scholarship and of the finer character. 
Certain qualities all proprietors, presidents, principals, and superintendents must have in 
common. The routinist is safer in the public school than in the private. The man of weak 
health is better off in the public school, for the cares are less. The gains of the successful 
private school manager will always be greater than the salary of the principal or superintend- 
ent, for the work is harder; in the case of the boarding school manager, the work is incom- 
parably harder. On the other hand, the scholarship requirements of the public school positions 
are greater than are those of the proprietary positions of authority. 



THE PRIVATE SCHOOL 253 

the cost of their necessaries of life. At the same time, it 
is ethically true that rent, interest, taxes, and profits ought 
to cease before the workers of the nation are reduced to 
poverty, which may be defined as that condition of life in 
which an individual has an income insufficient for the pur- 
chase of all necessary food and clothing, shelter and fuel, 
for himself and those naturally dependent upon him. 

Obviously, the free public school is supported by the 
second of the above items, the taxes. In a certain sense, 
the taxes represent both necessaries and the surplus. 
Without government, most enterprises in modern busi- 
ness would cease at once, and dire starvation would set 
in. At the same time, the larger part of the annual taxes 
is spent for government purposes other than social protec- 
tion. It is equally obvious that the pay school has few 
patrons that are dependent upon wages for their incomes. 
In consequence, the private school is distinctly an enter- 
prise supported by the surplus wealth of the people. The 
pupils in private schools are characteristically the children 
of landlords, of capitalists, and of managers of business. 

The private school with an endowment fund is to that 
extent a landlord with rents and a capitalist with funds at 
interest. While the public school is supported by the levy 
of tax upon every piece of property within a given jurisdic- 
tion, the endowed private school is supported by levies of 
interest and rent upon various properties and business con- 
cerns. So far as the rents and interests are enforcible 
by the powers of government, the endowed school is a 
quasi-public enterprise. 

A question naturally arises as to whether endowed social 
institutions are likely to increase or to diminish in wealth 
in proportion to the wealth of the entire country. It is 
remembered by those who ask this question, that in various 



254 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

civilized nations, at certain stages in their social develop- 
ment, churches and monasteries, schools and hospitals, 
have held relatively great amounts of real estate and 
of other income-producing properties. Such, it appears, 
is the tendency of this nation at the present time. The 
wages of the wealth-producing employees are at this time 
scarcely twenty per cent of the total wealth that they 
produce. The other eighty per cent goes for so-called 
raw materials, taxes, rents, interest, and profit.^ Stocks, 
bonds, mortgages, and other estates in land are steadily 
gravitating into the hands of the wealthy, who pass in- 
creasing proportions of them over into the possession of 
libraries, schools, hospitals, missionary societies, and other 
charitable institutions. The amount of property thus iso- 
lated has reached a billion dollars, relatively an inconsid- 
erable sum in view of the hundred billions of the national 
wealth. The important element in this tendency is, that 
these endowments represent what is substantially a return 
to the public, of surplus wealth earned by the general 
community, and saved by individuals. 

While a school endowed so richly that it may charge 
small tuition fees, is in many ways the most fortunate of 
all schools, the position of the principal or president is not 
necessarily more attractive than either that of the public 
school principal or superintendent, or that of the proprie- 
tor of a school supported entirely by tuitions. Like the 
superintendent of a public school system, the principal of 
an endowed academy is subject to a board of control, 
and is vitally concerned with the question of income. 
Such a principal or president discusses endowments, their 
investments and income, and their increase, where the pub- 
lic school superintendent discusses current appropriations 

* See Appendix II. 



THE PRIVATE SCHOOL 255 

and bond issues. He has usually a much smaller field, 
for there are few endowed schools with over twenty or 
thirty teachers, and almost no superintendencies with less. 
Like the proprietor of the pay school, the principal of the 
endowed school must secure students so as to increase 
his revenues. As already indicated, he has the additional 
anxiety of trying to enlarge his endowments by obtaining 
donations from men of wealth. In particular, he needs 
scholarship funds, so that deserving poor students may 
attend irrespective of their private means. 

The endowed school has one great opportunity of ser- 
vice to the American people. It may fairly try experi- 
ments along new lines. Such experiments the proprietor 
of a day school scarcely dares to attempt lest he alienate 
his patrons. The public school principal or superintend- 
ent can scarcely ever persuade his board of control to 
permit him to make the experiments. When the experi- 
ments fail, he is almost certain to lose his position. For 
the origination of progressive movements in education, we 
must continue to look to endowed schools.^ Similarly, to 
private schools we may look for the preservation of the 
interests of individuals. Correspondingly, we may always 
expect to find in the public schools a system of education 
standardized for the preservation of the general welfare of 
society.^ 

That there is a real demand for private schools to-day, 

* In this respect, Cooper, Pratt, Drexel, and Armour Institutes, and the experimental 
schools of certain universities have done notable service. 

2 It is the purpose of this book to present the principles of public school administration. 
In view of my experience in proprietary and endowed private schools, I should be glad to 
present a much more specific treatment of this great and important topic. Those who would 
like to follow the matter further may read with profit Adams, " Some Famous American 
Schools," which offers a suggestive treatment. The types of such schools are far more 
numerous and extreme than the public schools represent, so that they do not lend them- 
selves to one general treatment. My few words upon the subject here are designed by 
contrast to bring out clearly the position of the public school. 



256 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

there can be no question. This demand arises from a 
social need, and causes the continuance of both proprietary 
and fiduciary schools. It is a demand from several quar- 
ters, and may be considered, therefore, in a sense, univer- 
sal. The nature of these demands has been considered 
at various points in the preceding pages. To add to those 
already suggested, attention may be called to that large 
class of our citizens who are engaged in government or 
private employment requiring changes of family quarters 
to such an extent that a child cannot be kept permanently 
at school except in a private school. There are tens of 
thousands of parents of children who go about from one 
city to another every year. From business reasons, they 
are compelled to make their home where they find it. 
Such children suffer greatly when the parents are com- 
pelled to keep them in public schools, for in making trans- 
fers they lose standing because of the over-rigidity of 
most public schools. Further, there is now a large class 
of citizens whose means are so great and whose labors in 
connection with them are so constant that they have no 
time to devote to personal care of their children. This 
fact may indicate a social disease, but it is none the less 
true, and it is at present irremediable. We must consider 
the flourishing private school that manages to endure for 
a period of years, and indicates thereby its real value, as a 
decidedly important feature of American education. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE TEACHER AS ADMINISTRATOR AND SUPERVISOR 

The functions of the teacher may be classed under four 
heads : instruction, discipline, supervision, and adminis- 
tration. 

As an instructor, the teacher inculcates knowledge ; as 
a disciplinarian, he, or she, keeps each individual and the 
class steadily at work either of study or of recitation. 
Many manuals have dealt fully with these two aspects of 
the teacher's profession. Several other books have thrown 
out interesting suggestions.^ 

As a supervisor, the teacher oversees and directs the 
pupil's use of time. And as administrator, the teacher 
makes his own program and that of his scholars. 

Supervision and administration by the teacher are not 
less important than instruction and discipline. The artist 
is displayed in the performance of these duties quite as 
much as in teaching and control, which are more apt to 
attract public attention. 

In many school systems, teachers are required to furnish 
daily to the principal of the school a program of the pro- 
posed next day's work. This includes the lessons both as 
topics and in text-book pages which are to be studied. In 
other schools, the teachers make weekly or monthly out- 
lines of the work they have done, and also an outline of 
the work they propose to do. This combined prospectus 
and review is sometimes required in addition to daily 
programs. Such frequent reports by the teacher to the 

1 See especially Hinsdale, " The Art of Study." 
257 



258 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

immediate supervising officer do not necessarily restrict the 
freedom of the teacher. Such freedom is of the utmost 
value to any school system. The teacher who is relatively 
free becomes self-reliant and thoughtful and often is able 
to originate extremely valuable suggestions. A person who 
is independent becomes responsible and has a dignity of 
character that a mere clerk can never have as a teacher 
in a schoolroom. Whether such reports are compatible 
with that other system of supervision by which the super- 
visors give minute instructions to teachers as to what they 
should teach and how they should teach it, is a fair ques- 
tion ; but there is no question whatever as to whether the 
teacher who may safely be trusted to plan and to organize 
and to carry out his own ideas is a person of distinctly 
higher grade of ability and character than those who are 
incompetent for a large measure of self-direction. Super- 
intendents sometimes are unable to distinguish between 
supervision and autocratic assignment of specific details. 
Obviously, the teacher who to a large extent plans his own 
work cannot exist in the school system of which the super- 
visor boasts, " I know at this hour and minute what every 
teacher in my schools is teaching." Such a method of 
so-called supervision is distinctly un-American, and where 
it exists is a pubHc confession of the comparative incom- 
petency of the class room teachers or of the superintendent. 
This does not mean that the teacher should decide as to 
whether the work in given grades should be upon certain 
topics or not. Such matters are decided by the course 
of study ; but it does mean that for the daily lengths of 
lessons, devices, home preparation, schoolroom study, 
notebook work, and similar matters, the teacher, not the 
principal or the supervisor, is primarily responsible. 
Moreover, a course of study that has been developed 



THE CLASS TEACHER 259 

largely by the advice of teachers actually engaged in 
class room work is certain to be better in various important 
respects than the course of study that is prepared solely 
by superintendents and boards of education.^ 

As administrator, the first business of the teacher is to 
learn thoroughly how much work in each subject the class 
is expected to cover within a period of time spent in a 
grade. This must be known with reference to all subjects 
before plans can be made for any one subject. As super- 
visor the first business of the teacher is to inform himself 
exactly regarding the proficiency of the children in all 
these subjects. Ordinarily, the school system will have 
a more or less definite assignment of time to be given to 
each separate subject per week or per month. The 
teacher, with or without consultation with the principal, 
is now ready to prepare the general program.^ 

The principles that govern the general program are 
these, namely : — 

1. The most difficult study is usually placed first in the 
morning, then an easier study follows, and next a hard study. 

2. The amount of time assigned to each study depends, 
within the limits of the course of study, upon the amount 
of information that the children are expected to receive 
by the pursuit of each study. 

3. Ordinarily, but one difficult study or exercise is pur- 
sued in the afternoon session. It is well to have such a 
study as an inducement to regular attendance at school. 
As is well known, the children are not apt to make as good 

1 The nominating committee of the board of education of a certain city, in offering the 
superintendency of schools to an educator, said with approval that their course of study 
and rules and regulations had been prepared without a word of suggestion from any teacher, 
whether superintendent, principal, or kindcrgartner. The position was immediately declined. 
The later educational history of the city showed that the self-confidence of a highly cultured 
board is not less dangerous to the schools than the blundering ignorance of a board of unedu- 
cated men. * For a general program^ sec Appendix VII. 



26o ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

progress in their afternoon studies as in the first two hours 
of the morning. 

To be specific, in grammar grades, arithmetic or grammar may well 
be assigned to the first work of the morning. Either geography or 
history may be assigned to the work of the afternoon. 

Whether every study or exercise shall have a place each 
day will depend upon the course of study and the general 
conditions of the school system. Obviously, physical 
training so far as it consists of class room calisthenics 
must be carried on every day. Where class room physical 
training is supplemented by drill in a gymnasium, the 
gymnastics occur several times a week. On such days, 
the class room calisthenics may be omitted. 

This general program may be written upon the black- 
board and kept there. It is convenient for reference by 
the superintendent or other visitor. It is also, both to the 
children and to the teacher, a valuable reminder of the 
passage of time. 

The daily program is a much more particular matter. 
This is usually written upon a sheet of paper and kept 
upon the teacher's desk. It is made new each day. Its 
making usually occupies the last few minutes before the 
teacher leaves the schoolroom in the afternoon. A file of 
such daily programs is invaluable for purposes of consulta- 
tion, both by the teacher and by the supervisor.^ 

4. As a general proposition, exercises in the lowest, pri- 
mary grade should not last over fifteen minutes, while in 
the highest grammar grades they may be continued with 
profit forty-five minutes. Certain studies may be continued 
longer than others. The principle is not to continue a 
recitation longer than to the point at which the fatigue 
of the average child sets in. 

1 For an example of a daily program in a middle grammar grade, consult Appendix VIII. 



THE CLASS TEACHER 26 1 

As supervisor, the teacher secures ample information 
regarding the home conditions of each child, either meet- 
ing the parents at school or visiting them at their homes. 

The younger the child, the more important are such con- 
sultations between parent and teacher. Such meetings and 
visits may at times be disagreeable and even painful, — dis- 
agreeable, because of the occasional antagonism of the 
parents to the apostles of culture; painful, because of 
the poverty and sorrow in many homes. Nevertheless, 
the teacher who has not the character, the ability, and the 
social power to sustain himself, or herself, in every possible 
meeting with the parent, is scarcely ready for a profession 
that requires not less insight and tact and personal force 
than any other.^ 

The teacher with practical information about the chil- 
dren's conditions is in a position to give valuable advice to 
parents and children regarding such matters as : — 

1. Fresh air in the sleeping rooms at night. 

2. Eating cereals for breakfast, and not supplying the child with 
strong coffee and tea. 

3. Correction by a skilful eye doctor of such defects as nearsighted- 
ness, farsightedness, astigmatism, strabismus, esophoria. 

4. Refraining from violent physical punishment that lowers the tone 
of the child's physical system.^ 

5. Continuing the child at school for a sufficient length of time to 
permit him to gain some knowledge at least of history and geography. 

1 It is in this phase of supervision by the teacher that the practical value of child study 
is best seen. There is unfortunately as yet no book on child study that is wholly satisfactory, 
but the following books may be found helpful : Warner, " Study of Children and the Nerv- 
ous System of the Child " ; Taylor, " Study of the Child." By far the most helpful of all 
child study publications for teachers is the Pedagogical Seminary, a quarterly magazine, 
edited by President G. Stanley Hall of Clark University. 

' Within my own personal experience was the case of a child who was steadily becoming 
more and more defective in mind. I found that the parent (who was a man of considerable 
income, and had an important business position) punished the child daily, using a lead pipe 
varied by a wooden fence picket. Within six months after this abuse was stopped, the child 
was restored to a normal condition of body, mind, and morals. 



262 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

6. Securing the regular daily attendance of the child at school. 

In many other matters, the teacher may give counsel whose value 
cannot be measured or expressed adequately in language. There seems 
to be a steady tendency on the part of adults to degenerate. The Master 
taught that the child renews the hope and the knowledge of the im- 
mortal life. Only by the activity of teachers, preachers, physicians, and 
others interested in the spiritual and moral welfare of the race can even 
the average culture of this country be maintained. That teacher has by 
no means performed his function in society who has taught the children 
well from nine to three o'clock daily and who has done nothing more. 

Fundamental in the teacher's life is his management 
of his own time out of school. This matter is discussed so 
frequently in books, magazines, and newspapers that it 
may seem unnecessary to deal with it here. But certain 
principles seem to be neglected even by the writers of 
these books and articles ; and they are sometimes not only 
neglected, but ignored, for a time, by practical and even 
successful teachers. 

I. Every teacher, male or female, university graduate 
or not, young or old, must study. The mind must be a 
wellspring. This study must be regular, not only along 
the lines of the teaching profession, but also along other 
general lines. 

The school superintendent, the supervisors, and the prin- 
cipals have obligations to young teachers in respect to 
such out-of-school study. In every school system, it is ex- 
tremely desirable to offer courses of lectures, with essays by 
each attendant, upon subjects not directly connected with 
school work as well as upon educational subjects.^ 

Such meetings of teachers may be arranged as circles, 
with a leader who takes charge of the general discussion, 
or as seminars, in which the leader directs the preparation 
of the thesis. Lecture courses or reading circles in which 

* Sec Appendix X and Index. 



THE CLASS TEACHER 263 

the teacher takes no part are almost valueless. Indeed, 
for the best results, small groups are required, in which 
from a dozen to a score of teachers work together. 

2. Every teacher needs outdoor exercise daily. This 
applies equally to the teacher who is employed in a school- 
house with the fresh air from a first-class ventilating sys- 
tem and to the teacher whose room is little better than the 
Black Hole at Calcutta. The value of outdoors is not only 
the value of fresh air, great as that is. Even in cities the 
teacher can find the outdoors Nature in the sky and the 
wind and the light. Parks are usually near. The teacher 
in the small city or town or in the open country has every 
possible inducement to walk daily in the world of Nature. 

Moreover, in becoming a civilized being, man is per- 
petually in danger of becoming a slave to civilization. 
The teacher is constantly in danger of becoming afflicted 
with that strange disease which often afflicts men for a 
long time imprisoned within stone walls. It must be 
remembered that the teacher is the only person practicing 
a profession who is not thereby brought constantly into 
new scenes. The physician sees his patients in a great 
variety of conditions. The lawyer is learning something 
new all the time, and goes from a lawsuit about a piece of 
machinery to a struggle with a newspaper editor. The 
minister or priest sees a great variety of different adults and 
of different homes in the course of the performance of his 
parish rounds. But the teacher spends at least six hours 
daily for two hundred days within the same four walls, 
and it is on record that teachers have taught thirty years 
and more continuously in the same room. The only pos- 
sible cure for the resultant confinement of the mind is to 
go out of doors daily as a lover of Nature. 

3. The third principle that should be regarded by every 



264 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

teacher, is to mingle daily and as much as possible with " all 
sorts and conditions " of people. There is a tendency on 
the part of supervisors to become dictatorial through over- 
much contact with subordinates and with persons younger 
than themselves. There is a similar tendency on the part 
of teachers to become dogmatic and hard to get along 
with because of their daily contact with children and with 
other intellectual inferiors. The remedy for these narrow- 
ing influences is to associate with business men and home- 
making women as much and as frequently as time permits. 
For this same reason, every teacher should read the best 
daily and weekly papers and monthly magazines. This does 
not mean that the center of the teacher's interest should be 
transferred from the schoolroom, but it does mean that the 
life of a teacher should not be in a circle around one center, 
but in a great ellipse about two not distant foci. 

The teacher as supervisor will be interested in the out- 
of-school reading of the children. He, or she, who is in a 
good school system will probably have access to a good 
school library, whose books may be circulated freely among 
the school children. Or, better, the school will have a 
class room library in every room. The competent teacher 
knows the names of hundreds of good books for children 
to read. In several States, there are funds apportioned to 
assist local districts to purchase library books.^ In the 
same degree, the teacher is informed thoroughly regarding 
works of art, and makes suggestions for pictures not only 
for the school but also for the home. Indeed, the influence 
of the teacher in the matter of the home library and of 
home decoration cannot be overestimated. 

* The State of New Jersey duplicates the first $20 spent by a school for library books, and 
adds annually $10 to assist in the establishment of a school library. This amount is not 
nearly enough, but it is a beginning and shows the tendency of legislation. In that State, 
the money may be used for scientific apparatus or for pictures as well as for books. 



THE CLASS TEACHER 265 

In certain quarters in the old days, it was thought to be 
enough for the teacher to know the fundamentals of the 
subjects actually to be taught in the class room. At the 
present time, we realize that no teacher can know too much 
of literature, art, science, and history. From great stores 
of knowledge, the teacher is able to meet the greatest pos- 
sible variety of needs both of the individual pupils and of 
the class. 

4. The fourth principle to be observed by all teachers is 
that of frequent renewal of knowledge relating theoretically 
and practically to the progress of education. It is desirable 
for all teachers to have visiting days, when they may see 
the schools of other teachers in actual operation. Perhaps 
the young teacher requires such opportunities of visiting 
schools when in session less than the older teacher. A 
fair allowance for such visits is two days a year for visits 
outside of the local system, and one or two in other 
schools of the system. In making this requirement of 
teachers, boards of education and school superintendents 
are doing more than they can possibly do in any other way, 
with an equal expenditure of time, to bring their schools 
up to at least the average condition of the best neighboring 
communities, for they bring into play the human spirit of 
emulation. 

In making such visits, teachers do well to go to the 
school before the pupils have assembled, and to remain 
until after they have gone home, so as to acquaint them- 
selves with the full day's routine. It is not, however, by 
any means necessary for teachers to confine their attention 
to any one grade or class. On the contrary, it is rather 
better to visit several classes, following the plan of many 
superintendents and calling at least twice in each room, 
rather than making long visits in any one room. 



266 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

5. It is desirable for young teachers to remain not more 
than two years in the first school, and to begin low down in 
the grades. He finally makes the best high school teacher 
who has had some grammar school work, and she finally 
makes the best advanced grammar school teacher who has 
done primary work. The teacher who intends finally to do 
grammar work does well to begin with a third or fourth 
grade class. Persons with considerable versatility of talent 
do well to begin in the first-year grade, or even in the 
kindergarten. The principle involved is that of knowing 
the genesis and order of development of children's powers. 

6. Every teacher, whether college president or kinder- 
garten assistant, ought to know a good deal about the 
great new subject of child study, which is simply genetic 
psychology practically applied. This means that the 
teachers should know the needs and interests of children 
of both sexes in all the different years of their lives. 
Among the great topics of child study are these : — 

1. The child's sense of honor. 

2. Moral obligation. 

3. Sense of responsibility. 

4. Relation to other children. 

5. Relation to adults. 

6. Adolescence, considered : Physically. 

7. Mentally. 

8. Morally. 

9. The mind of the child : His imagination. 

10. His common sense. 

11. His memory. 

12. The soul of the child. 

13. The principles governing : His affections. 

14. His ambitions. 

15. His motives. 

16. His ideals. 

17. The child's view of Nature. 



THE CLASS TEACHER 267 

18. His view of himself. 

19. His view of society as a whole. 

20. His views of the community surrounding him. 

21 . The physical life of a child. 

22. The principles of growth. 

23. The normal height and weight of children. 

24. Defects of eyes, ears, spinal curvature, etc. 

No teacher of experience and of proper training dreams 
of teaching a child the principles of long division before 
she understands how much the child knows of addition 
and subtraction and short division. And yet most teachers, 
without knowing the child's ideas of honor, will not hesi- 
tate to instruct the child in the principles of honor that 
control the life of an adult. Further, all of us are prone 
to err in our endeavor to impose the morals of persons of 
culture and opportunity upon the children of classes of 
people who have had no extended opportunities of such 
culture. In advanced school systems such topics are con- 
stantly being studied in teachers' circles. The study of 
the pupils as a class is not enough. What is required is 
that all teachers individually make child study in their 
own class rooms, and genetic psychology in their homes 
and during summer vacations, matters of vital professional 
concern. Only by such knowledge can the occupation of 
teaching be elevated above the plane of haphazard empiri- 
cism to that of a systematic science, and of an art involv- 
ing and assuring skill. 

One of the barriers to educational progress is the limita- 
tion of the school work by the criticisms of teachers and 
parents. Principals must be warned in their own minds 
of the fact that most parents are failures, and that only a 
few people in this world are successes as business men, as 
parents, and as citizens generally. It is not given to most 



268 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

persons to succeed in life. It is a curious fact that those 
persons who fail are the very ones most likely to have 
positive opinions as to how to rear children for success 
in life. There is a psychological explanation for this con- 
dition of their minds, for conceit is the cause of most fail- 
ures, and those who know things hardest and are least 
open to influence by others, are those who make the most 
mistakes in life. An open-minded, versatile man or woman 
is rare. Almost always such a person is successful. 

This limitation of schools by parents, and often to a certain extent 
by teachers, affects the incoming studies chiefly.^ 

For the last principle : Every teacher must rise to the 
twentieth-century point of view, and look into the future. 
In fact, the difference between educated and uneducated 
men and women is largely in the power of foresight. To 
know how things are progressing, and to see the variety of 
ways in which progress may take place, indicates true 
talent. All the value of wisdom is in foreseeing what is 
likely to come to pass. When one means that a certain 
otherwise probable future event shall not come to pass, 
the necessity of a preventive may be seen and its nature 
may be inquired into. To use medical terms, prognosis is 
as important as diagnosis, though it is dependent upon it. 
That is, there can be no foresight without insight. More- 
over, there can be no insight without absolutely truthful 
memory. The use of the imagination for the teacher is in 
the suggestion of hypotheses. Once the hypothesis be- 
comes the indicated or demonstrated truth, imagination 
should give way to observation and judgment. With this 
principle in mind, the importance of the teacher's foresee- 
ing the possibiHties of his own future and of the future of 

* For a further discussion of this matter, see the chapter on the " New Education." 



THE CLASS TEACHER 269 

his children becomes apparent. This is the reason why 
the ambitious teacher who looks forward to the future is 
more useful than any other. The young man who, in the 
high school, forms plans for the time when he is to be a 
college professor or a school superintendent does better 
work than he who never dreams. 

The question is sometimes raised as to whether young women 
teachers should regard themselves so wholly consecrated to the pro- 
fession of teaching as never to consider the possibility of marriage. 
It is perfectly true that no person should ever enter the teaching pro- 
fession who does not intend to remain in it always. But the woman 
who marries does not give up the profession of teaching, for the inevi- 
table expectation of matrimony is maternal, and the mother is the first 
and greatest teacher. Indeed, all parents should understand pedagogy, 
which means literally, in the Greek, " the leading of children," or as 
some say, " the leading of the little children's helpless and wandering 
feet." It will be a fortunate day for this country when all boys and 
girls go to appropriate schools to the age of twenty ; when in the last 
two years of the school period all take certain courses in physiology, 
psychology, and pedagogy. It is with the teacher, as with the business 
man, — the larger the horizon, the likelihood of the greater success. 
Men and women of large imagination are quite as likely to possess good 
common sense as those who have no imagination at all. There is as 
much sense in the poetic as in the prosaic. Poetic is from voUo) and 
practical from irpdrTw, and both words mean " to do." 

While it has been frequently said in this text that the woman princi- 
pal and teacher is usually very successful in matters of detail, it is to be 
noted that young female teachers often exhibit the opposite quality of 
gross carelessness. Further, in connection with that quality they exhibit 
another quite as unfortunate, which is an extreme lack of judgment in 
the proportionate treatment of the different topics in school lessons. 

It is important that young women teachers should be carefully 
watched by principals for both of these deficiences. Their later 
success in school work depends almost entirely upon their learning 
accuracy and carefulness and in their coming through larger knowl- 
edge and more experience to a rational view of the relative importance 
of topics. Most young teachers insist upon dealing with the details 



270 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

of such a study as geography with absurd thoroughness, while neglect- 
ing its broader aspects. This is equally true of history. In arithmetic, 
they tend to exaggerate the importance of the process and to forget the 
all-importance of the principle. 

Were this text designed to discuss the pedagogy of education, this 
topic would be greatly expanded. The important thing here for the 
administrator to remember is the need of care in the supervision of 
young teachers in this respect. It is noteworthy that young men as 
teachers do not often tend to err in the second particular. 

In this chapter, designed as it is for men as well as for women, it is 
necessary to discuss not only elementary and secondary school positions, 
but the so-called higher positions of the profession. In order of theo- 
retical importance (were conditions ideal), school positions might be 
ranked as follows : — 

1. The United States commissionership of education. 

2. The State superintendency. 

3. The State university chancellorship. 

4. The State normal school principalship. 

5. The college or university (private or endowed) presidency. 

6. The city superintendency. 

7. College instruction (professorship only) . 

8. The high school principalship. 

9-10. The supervisorships : (a), general ; (^), special. 

11. The elementary school principalships. 

12. High school instruction. 

13. Elementary school instruction. 

14. Kindergartening. 

At first thought, it may seem strange to rank positions in this order, 
but upon consideration it will be seen that in point of fact the most im- 
portant educational position in the United States to-day, is the New 
York city superintendency. Unfortunately, the importance of great 
city superintendencies is not sufficiently recognized in dollars and cents 
and in tenure. Those who direct the work of thousands of teachers and 
of normal schools that are preparing teachers, and the work of hundreds 
of thousands of children who are going to school to teachers, should 
outrank in the range and significance of their work the occupant of 
any university presidency. 

During the twentieth century, normal school graduates without addi- 
tional study should not expect to rise higher than elementary school 



THE CLASS TEACHER 2/1 

instruction. The college graduate who has had at least a year of profes- 
sional training is needed for high school instruction. The normal 
school graduate with post graduate work is ready for elementary school 
principalships, but only the college graduate with several years of post 
graduate work has the right to aspire to the higher positions of the 
profession. Those boards of trustees of academies and colleges, and 
those boards of education of cities and indeed of States which elect, 
persons with less qualifications than are indicated in this discussion, 
are working injury to the cause of education, which is the cause of 
American democracy and the freedom of the whole human race. The 
success of the American experiment depends upon keeping in the 
teachers' and administrators' positions men and women who are quali- 
fied for them. 

Another question in connection with this topic of the 
teacher as administrator and supervisor is whether there 
shall be departmental instruction in elementary schools. 
The general weight of opinion seems to be that the primary 
child should not have more than one teacher with an 
occasional visit from the supervisor. In the advanced 
grammar grades, during the last two or three years of the 
course, it is necessary to employ a few teachers with 
specialties. The best plans, however, do not involve in- 
struction by more than three or four different teachers. 
Consequently, the teacher who aspires to do advanced 
work must select studies in which he or she may be pre- 
pared best to give instruction. Various combinations of 
the ordinary studies may be made. The line of division 
seems to be that, where two teachers are employed, one 
takes arithmetic, and the other the language course. 
Ordinarily, history and geography, or geography and 
science, are taught by the same teacher. Where instruc- 
tion is given in drawing, in manual training, in music, and 
in penmanship, it is seldom that one or even two teachers 
suffice for all these extremely different arts. 



2/2 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Whether our public schools shall permit corporal punish- 
ment at all is a debatable question, but whether teachers 
in graded schools shall administer such punishment is 
not debatable. The true solution of the problem is the 
establishment of reform home schools and of "ungraded" 
classes, to which shall be sent all incorrigible pupils. The 
principals in charge of such schools or classes may require 
the right to administer corporal punishment. No teacher 
of an ordinary class ever needs such a right, or ever should 
be degraded to such a duty.^ 

A great peril of the teaching profession is physical over- 
work. The teachers of this country are characteristically 
underpaid, which means that they live in small rooms, 
have a routine diet not always of the best quality in 
good variety, that they have little recreation, social or 
physical, and that their holidays and vacations even are 
passed under the cloud of financial anxiety. This is a 
pitiable misfortune to the nation, which is too blind to see 
it. Ancient Egypt, which overvalued the teachers by 
making them priests, and in a special sense the sons of 
the gods, and which built for them palaces and gave them 
slaves, managed to survive five millenniums of years. It is 
a question whether modern America will survive five cen- 
turies. Rome, whose teachers were slaves, had scarcely as 
many centuries of her imperial greatness. England, which 
came to the forefront in 1588, has never properly valued 
teachers, who are the repository of culture, and England 
to-day is apparently on the wane. On the other hand, 
Germany, whose modern rise dates from the encouragement 
of education, not a century ago, has given to teachers an 
authority in the nation that promises well for the future. 

1 Many years ago, the State of New Jersey abolished corporal punishment absolutely, in 
all public and private schools. No State has better school discipline to-day than this leader 
in a nobly humanitarian movement. 



THE CLASS TEACHER 2/3 

As it is a safe principle for a school superintendent to 
transact for himself, without reference to the board of edu- 
cation, all matters that are within his authority or too 
trivial to call to their attention, so also it is a safe rule for a 
teacher to transact with parents and pupils all matters that 
are within his authority and that are too trivial to call to 
the attention of the principal or supervisor. That is a 
good teacher who refers only a few cases of discipline a 
year to the principal, and only a few questions with regard 
to other matters. Good teachers do refer some matters to 
principals, but they never refer many. In short, the com- 
petent teacher has the ability and the desire to manage 
most of the concerns of his pupils and of his class. 

It may be needless, but it serves to round the com- 
pleteness of this chapter, to say that a competent teacher 
is both punctual and regular in all school matters, such 
as daily attendance and keeping all appointments. 

In a certain city, the two men who for a quarter of a century were 
famous for their success, the one in administering the school affairs, and 
the other in municipal affairs, were famous for their punctuality in keep- 
ing their engagements. So sure was a certain observer of the punctu- 
ality of one of them, that he remarked to a visitor that Mr. So-and-So 
would reach the council rooms at eight o'clock. As they arrived at the 
door at eight o'clock, exactly at the first stroke of the clock, Mr. So-and- 
So was seen to put his hand upon the door of the main entrance. Simi- 
larly, teachers who are unusually successful get the reputation among 
the children and with the parents of always being on duty. They know 
how to administer their time, and therefore to supervise the children 
and youth in their care. 

There are times when a teacher ought not to attempt 
to perform his or her regular duties, but it is safe to say 
that ordinarily a person who is not sick enough to be in 
bed is well enough to do routine work. Moreover, if a 
person is over thirty years of age, the performance of 



274 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

duties is in itself an assistance to the health, partly be- 
cause it is a relief from the anxiety regarding omitted 
duties. On the other hand, and finally, in respect to 
young men and young women between the ages of twenty 
and twenty-six or eight, I must say, not only as a matter 
of professional experience, but of some knowledge of 
hygiene and medicine, derived from medical studies syste- 
matically pursued, that when the youthful person cannot 
spend a full year at twenty-one or twenty-two years of 
age, in the open country, without engaging in any work 
that will tax the brain, it is desirable for him or her while 
teaching to heed the cautions of fatigue. 

It is a feature of American civilization that the boy or 
girl goes to school for ten or twelve years until the high 
school work is completed, and then to the normal school 
or college for several years more, so that the great period 
of secondary growth, from eighteen to twenty-five, when 
the frame broadens and the muscles strengthen, is passed 
under a severe mental strain. The result is seen in the 
attenuated frame and in the nervous condition of so many 
normal school and college graduates. It may be said that, 
almost as a rule, unless one takes a voluntary vacation 
for a year between the ages of twenty and twenty-six, or 
else has an unusually easy teaching position, before he is 
thirty-five years old, he will be compelled by nervous ex- 
haustion either to give up the profession entirely or to omit 
work for at least two or three years.^ 

1 One of the unpleasant questions now frequently debated is whether the teacher is usually 
" overworked and underpaid." If overworked, the causes may be one or more of three : 
X. The neglected right to the Sabbatical day and to the Sabbatical year of the Mosaic Code. 
One year in seven or the equivalent is none too frequent a rest for the growing child and 
youth. 3. Insufficient preparation for the task in hand. A competent person can do well 
and quickly what worries the incompetent into illness. 3. Badly ventilated or unventilated 
schoolhouses or overcrowded classes. This form of " overwork " is really poisoning. For 
the " underpayment," see Chapter XVI. 



CHAPTER XII 
THE NEW EDUCATION AND THE COURSE OF STUDY 

In the history of every progressive people there is a con- 
stant procession of the subjects of study. ^ 

We may class all of the studies of the so-called public 
school curriculum, from the kindergarten to the high 
school, under three heads ; viz. : — 

I. The outgoing studies, 
II. The modern studies, and 
III. The incoming studies. 

The studies in group I are those which no longer meet 
fully the conditions of the present time. Some schools 
thrust them out sooner than others. The studies brought 
together in group II are the characteristic studies of the 
age. They meet the prevailing modern conditions. The 
studies classed under group III are those which mark the 
signs of the times, and forerun the future. It might be 
interesting, and perhaps profitable, in a pedagogical trea- 
tise to discuss the philosophy of this matter. No doubt 
history does repeat itself, and that many of the incoming 
studies are those that at one time, in some previous civili- 
zation, were prevalent in some form or other. 

Of the studies taught to-day in a modem city school system, we may 
make the following list, which will include practically all branches of 
importance : — 

^ In this book on school administration, this extremely important subject is outlined 
merely with reference to its administrative features. 

275 



276 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

1 . English. ^ 

2. Latin. 

3. Greek. 

4. German. 

5. French. 

6. Spanish. 

7. Possibly another Modern Language, e.g. Greek, Italian. 

8. Arithmetic. 

9. Algebra. 

10. Geometry : Plane, Solid, Analytic. 

1 1 . Trigonometry. 

12. Other Higher Mathematics. 

13. Nature Study. 

14. Physiology. 

15. Biology ; or Botany and Zoology. 

16. Physics. 

17. Chemistry. 

18. Astronomy. 

19. Geology. 

20. Physical Geography. 

21. Geography. 

22. Commercial Geography. 

23. Other Sciences. 

24. History : United States. 

25. History: English. 

26. French History. 

27. General History : Ancient, Mediaeval, Modern. 

28. Greek History. 

29. Roman History. 

30. Other History. 

31. Civil Government. 

32. Political Economy. 

33. Commercial Law. 

34. History of Commerce. 

35. Other Political Sciences. 

36. Manual Training ; Wood-working. 

37. Iron-working; Construction of Machinery. 

38. Basketry. 

39. Sewing and Dressmaking. 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND COURSE OF STUDY 277 

40. Weaving. 

41 . Other Industrial Arts. 

42. Cooking. 

43. Household Sanitation. 

44. Care of the Sick. 

45. Other subjects of Domestic Science. 

46. Kindergartening, with its four subdivisions : (a) Geometric In- 
struction ; {d) Story-telling ; (c) Games ; (d) Busy Work and Instruc- 
tion. 

47. The School Arts : (a) Reading ; (<^) Writing ; (c) Figuring. 

48. Spelling. 

49. Stenography or Phonography (Shorthand) . 

50. Typewriting. 

51. Bookkeeping. 

52. The Various Trades : (a) Carpentry ; {3) Other Trades. 

53. Physical Training. 

54. Gymnastic Work. 

55. Inspection of Health. 

56. Music : {a) Class ; (^) Individual ; (c) Sight Reading ; (d) Other 
Instruction. 

57. Ethics. 

58. Psychology. 

59. Logic. 

60. Drawing. 

61. Current Events. 

62. Art. 



In very large school systems, or in systems operated 
under special conditions, other studies will be found in 
actual operation. In this list, long though it is, it has 
been found necessary to omit all distinction of grades in 
work. However, the reading of the child in the first 
primary grade, which is chiefly phonetic and word memo- 
rizing, is very different from the reading of the high 
school pupil. Obviously, the difference in methods is 
so great as practically to create different subjects. Such 
differences, however, I omit noting. 



278 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

The outgoing subjects at any stage in the civilization of 

a people may be called decadent. This decadence may 

indeed be a misfortune to the deeper and essential life of 

the people. 

To illustrate : Recently, ethical instruction based on the Bible may 
be considered as going out of the schools. The modern teacher gives 
less time than did the teachers of a former generation to exhortation and 
to Biblical or other religious instruction. 

In the course of the last hundred years, Latin and Greek 
have been slowly moving out of the schools, greatly to 
their loss in cultural spirit and atmosphere. On the other 
hand, the modern languages may be classed among the 
incoming studies. This group of the subjects of the future 
includes all of the industrial, commercial, and scientific 
subjects. How to find place for the good new subjects 
that are pushing their way in the schools, while retaining 
the good old subjects now firmly planted in the curriculum, 
is a difficult problem for the school administrator as well 
as the educational philosopher. 

For purposes of record, it may be said that in the first 
decade of the present century the following are the strictly 
standard and practically universal subjects of the school 
curriculum : — 

1. English, language and literature. 

2. Latin, language and literature. 

3. German, language and literature. 

4. History, United States, English, general, and ancient. 

5. Arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. 

6. Reading, writing, and spelling. 

It is easy to recognize the incoming subjects, whose 
entrance is almost invariably accompanied by the incom- 
ing of a supervisor or specialist. Almost the only reason 
why any supervisor of a specialty is required in the Ameri- 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND COURSE OF STUDY 279 

can public school to-day is that most teachers prepared a 
decade or two decades ago were not given instruction in 
the subjects represented by the specialist. 

It is interesting to note the presence of the music supervisor in the 
schools. He does not represent an incoming subject, but one that very 
few persons can teach well. Indeed, many good teachers of all other 
common school subjects, cannot teach music at all. 

In respect to the new education, the great principle for 
the school superintendent and for the board of education 
is to maintain the good while making place for the better 
and removing the worst. A feature of singular importance 
in connection with the new education is that many old 
studies are undergoing such change in their methods as 
practically to amount to new studies. 

To illustrate : The subject of chemistry is now a very different study 
from the former chemistry, taught from a text-book without a labora- 
tory. Modern chemistry is learned by individual work in the labora- 
tories. Similarly, the modern mathematical course for elementary schools 
is a very different course from the old course in arithmetic. 

The great advantage of school systems that are able to 
select teachers from a variety of normal schools, and that 
have a large percentage of young teachers, is that the 
school authorities may select teachers educated under 
modern conditions and in modern courses and methods. 
The value of old and experienced teachers is well known. 
That of young and inexperienced teachers is not so well 
known. It consists largely in the fact that they repre- 
sent the principles of the new education.^ 

It is often very difficult to secure the installation of new 
courses of study in established systems. There is still the 
old animal idea of inherited instinct, by which a child tends, 
so the ignorant think, to be just as good, to do just as much, 

* See Appendix IX for a summary of a modem course of study with assignments of time to 
be apportioned to each subject in each grade. 



280 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

and to do it as well, as his father and mother, jiist as a dog 
inherits the instincts of his kind. This would be true if 
men were animals only, but we are not, and we do not in- 
herit the ideas of the human mind. Consequently, the 
human character has the power to progress ; unfortunately 
also it has the power of retrogression. Degeneration is 
easier than regeneration. The man who says, " My edu- 
cation was good enough for me, and I do not intend my 
son to have any better," nine times out of ten means 
(whether he knows the fact or not) that his son is to have 
a worse education than he had. Even if equal in extent, 
the education of the son would prove unequal to the in- 
creasing difficulties of a progressive civilization. 

So large is the influx to-day of foreigners in American 
society that we are in constant danger of setting up sex 
and class castes. The German has an invincible idea that 
a girl needs only the education of a housewife, while the 
English immigrant, coming as he does from the middle 
class, is entirely satisfied with the elementary school edu- 
cation for his sons and daughters. Now modern education 
is an effort to bring into the life of all children and youth 
the treasures of the wisdom of the ages ; it is an effort to 
elevate. In a democracy, the assumption on the part of 
the teacher that he has the power to elevate children above 
their parents gives offense. However, the native Ameri- 
can of native ancestry and the intelligent foreigner who 
emigrated from the Old World for the purpose of securing 
the opportunities of the New, realize that the school stands 
for the improvement of children beyond their parents. 

The time was in American education when geography 
was being introduced in public schools. It is a matter 
of tradition in the State of Massachusetts, that, when the 
subject was first proposed, it was violently resisted by the 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND COURSE OF STUDY 28 1 

members of some boards of education, and by other unen- 
lightened citizens, on the ground that the child did not 
need to know what was going on upon the other side of 
the world. The result was that in a considerable number 
of communities, the school principals (there were no school 
superintendents then), who recommended the introduction 
of geography into the curriculum, in many cases lost their 
positions because they were too progressive. 

With the general principle that a child should learn at 
school what he needs to know, there can be no quarrel. 
Further than that, the general principle that we should not 
make too rapid progress in education is also sound. As a 
political fact, the school system that progresses too fast 
is in danger of getting so far ahead of the people that a 
reaction may set in. 

At the present time, owing to the fact that we have 
become a nation of literates, those studies that involve 
reading are supposed to be the most important subjects, 
and the exercises that involve the use of the hands are sup- 
posed to be retrogressive and not necessary for the children. 

We have carried our teaching of reading to such an extent 
that men and women at home are wasting their time read- 
ing newspapers and worthless books, when they might 
better be spending their time as do the people on the same 
economic plane in the Old World, namely, in making 
articles of usefulness in the household. To be particular, 
there are a great many poor working-men who read news- 
papers all the evening when they might better be making 
household furniture. 

The great requirement of the new education, which is 
substantially a universal education, and by which the school 
becomes a factory of industrial skill, and of domestic, as 
well as of literary, proficiency, is that it tends to develop a 



282 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

community of people whose human nature is well rounded 
out. We do not wish in this country a population com- 
posed wholly of commercial clerks or of manual laborers. 
What we need is' an infinite variety of people ; one to do 
one thing, another to do another thing, and still another 
to do something entirely different from these. There is 
now altogether too much competition for people to do the 
same kind of work.^ 

Were this text designed to present completely the edu- 
cational aspects of our public schools, I should enlarge 
greatly upon this subject. It is scarcely less important 
than that of the salaries paid to teachers, which I recog- 
nize as the most important question of modern education. 
The general fact is that at the present time the fashion 
in the schools is to carry out too narrow, too uniform a 
curriculum. It needs to be broadened and enriched. But 
it does not need to be increased in the case of any individ- 
ual child. What we particularly need in the development 
of the new education in the school are a recognition of 
the value of elective studies and a new unification of sub- 
jects. It may be that a few studies, such as English and 
arithmetic, should be pursued by every child for five or six 
years, but human nature is born too various to be taught 
properly by any one fixed routine. 

We shall some day recover from the condition in which 
the sole object of education seems to be the sharpening 
of the mind. In fact, we are likely to swing to the oppo- 
site extreme, and to make the sole object of education the 
development of a sound body. One who knows the 
human body as it is ideally can but regret the sore 
neglect of physical development in free common schools. 
We may well believe that, with a proper series of studies 

* See my article, '* Higher Education of Boys," Education, 1903. 



THE NEW EDUCATION AND COURSE OF STUDY 283 

and of exercises in the schools, our youth of sixteen, 
eighteen, and twenty years of age would be twice as strong 
and feel more generally well in health than now. The 
human body seems to be stunted by the confined posture 
necessarily adopted year after year in the schoolroom. 

Physical culture and manual training are the emancipa- 
tion of the child from false conditions. The outdoor 
garden is an escape from a real child's prison, which, if it 
does not positively deform the body, does weaken it greatly. 
The child with the blanched face is an advertisement of 
the fact that during the sunny hours of the school day he 
is kept indoors, when by right of Nature he belongs out of 
doors. His weak hands are an advertisement that he is 
using the pencil when he should be using tools. The 
shrinking timidity of the school child, a frequent charac- 
teristic of girls in these times, is due to the fact that the 
child who should be doing physical work under good con- 
ditions is being stimulated to mental work all of the time. 

The great need of the new education is a return of 
interest in the home with its old household manufactures. 
In a modern town or city home, the child has little or noth- 
ing to do. In fact, he cannot do anything very important, 
for he must necessarily go to school most of the day. 
Outdoors often he can do nothing at all, for the typical 
home at the present time has no considerable yard about it. 
The average child has no useful domestic animals, such as 
the horse, the cow, the sheep, with which to play and to 
work, no garden in which to dig, no wood and no wool out 
of which to construct things useful for the family. 

As a general principle, then, it may be said of the move- 
ment for the new education that it is a movement to give 
children and youth their rights, and to realize for the nation 
the physical and mental possibilities of its people. 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF THE COMMUNITY 

Every neighborhood has its characteristic physical ap- 
pearance and likewise its characteristic spiritual atmos- 
phere. Perhaps no factors in life are more important than 
the local " climates," physical, personal, and social. Often 
one who has lived in a certain house upon a certain street, 
and then moves to another house upon another street, even 
though it be the same neighborhood, finds many of the 
aspects of life that are closest to one's personal happiness 
so greatly changed that one feels as though in a different 
world. Let a man live in a town upon a fine street in a 
good neighborhood, and then go to another town essen- 
tially like the first, and there live upon a less attractive 
street and in a worse house, and his views of the two 
towns will be very different. The man who lives in a big 
house, facing south or east, has a very different view of 
life from the man who lives in a little house facing north 
or west. The school superintendent who failed to give 
satisfaction in his office when drawing a salary of fourteen 
hundred dollars rightly objected to being compared with 
his successor who was paid three thousand dollars.^ They 
lived in different " climates." 

The larger the city, the more does it differ from every 
other city of similar size. The larger it is, the more im- 
portant is the question of the new superintendent or high 

1 The physician who attended this victim of public parsimony in his resultant nervous 
prostration said that the board had mistaken the schools for poorhouses. 

284 



EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF THE COMMUNITY 285 

school principal, " Where is it best for me to live ? " There 
are several elements to be considered ; such as the espe- 
cial healthfulness of location, the quality of the neighbors, 
the accessibility to the rooms used as offices,^ the nearness 
to persons influential in school affairs, and the character 
of the particular public school of the district to which the 
children of one's family must go. One must remember 
that wherever the superintendent lives should be the 
center of the educational policy of the whole school com- 
munity. He is the soul of its policy. The superintendent 
who finds his neighbors either apathetic upon all school 
matters or antagonistic to educational progress is in very 
great danger from the contagion of that moral miasma. 
He needs as neighbors a few men and women who are at 
heart with him in his desire for a better future, and he 
must avoid too close proximity to many opponents of high 
taxes for schools. He needs the moral support of those 
who can discriminate between the greater and the lesser 
good as well as between the bad and the good, and who 
have the courage to go forward with their intelligence as 
their guide. 

There are several reasons for this caution. The mere 
presence of a school reformer arouses and angers the 
opponents of school improvement. Again, it is wearing 
to the nerves of the strongest men constantly to do battle 
for a cause with old " familiars " as opponents. Moreover, 
such battling is waste of time. It is easier to make ten new 
friends than to convert one old foe. Lastly, the brightest 
men occasionally fall into errors, especially in conversation. 
These errors are not important with school friends, but 

* In small communities it is not well to live too near the center of things unless desirous 
to have all one's evenings occupied by callers upon public business. To go out a short dis- 
tance from too convenient electric lines is often the part of wisdom. 



\ 



286 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

they may be so magnified as to be perilous when repeated 
by school opponents. 

A certain school superintendent had as a next-door neighbor a con- 
stant enemy of public schools. Trying to convert him, the enthusiast 
made matters worse. Year after year this opponent blocked his measures 
for school betterment. Finally the superintendent moved a few blocks 
away ; two years thereafter the former neighbor failed to note the 
coming of the season of school controversy, when the annual appro- 
priations were made, and the superintendent won in his measures. 
The opponent met him later and confessed that " out of sight " meant 
"out of mind." There was never any more opposition in that quarter. 

An instance of this was when a school superintendent said to a 
neighbor, " The high school seems to be falling off in numbers," meaning 
that in the spring the attendance was less than in the fall. The 
neighbor, who was a councilman and "in politics," reported that the 
" superintendent had confessed that the high school was a failure, chil- 
dren were dropping out, and no interest was being taken." 

With these general comments upon the superintendent, 
who should be the prime mover in all educational public 
opinion, we may pass to an analysis of the educational situ- 
ation in the community from his point of view. He sees 
that the community, as a whole, has, and always has had, a 
school policy. He sees the manifestations of this in the 
school buildings, in the current expenses, and in the breadth 
and quality of the school work. He hears it in the words 
of "the man on the street." He hears the "echo," 
that is, what the citizens generally say of the children's 
work, the teachers* skill, and the board of education's 
plans and activities. In the local newspapers he reads 
expressions of the school policy of the community. Within 
a year or two after his arrival in the community, he knows 
its general sentiment in all school matters, and he ought 
also to know the sentiments and the relative strength 
of its various factions. He should know what kind of 



EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF THE COMMUNITY 287 

support he can count upon from the various cultural 
institutions, such as the churches and the literary societies. 
More important still, he should get his bearings in rela- 
tion to his problem, which is that of developing a still 
stronger educational sentiment. These obligations rest 
upon him because he is the man chosen to look farther 
ahead into the future than any one else, in the interests of 
the cultural progress of the community. Protected as he 
is from the assaults of politics, prejudice, and ignorance, 
by the intervention of the board members, who, themselves 
elected directly by the people, appoint him to lead the 
cause of progress, the superintendent has no moral right 
to throw back upon individual members of the board 
the onus of any educational measure. Yet for want of 
observing this simple and obvious principle, many a really 
good man in this high educational office has finally lost his 
own position by sacrificing one after another of his best 
supporters. The opponents of better schools rally their 
forces against these school enthusiasts and try to defeat 
them at the polls. The principle that the superintendent 
should follow may be stated fully in this form : To assume 
all the responsibility that the board is wiUing to surrender 
or can be persuaded to surrender. The converse of the 
principle is that it is unwise for any of the board members, 
or for the board as a whole, to accept any responsibility 
and to support any educational measure or policy before 
the general pubHc that, with decent regard for truth, they 
can throw upon the superintendent. Many and many a 
young lay educational enthusiast has gone down in the 
melde of American politics for want of this wisdom; and 
many a young professional educator has completely failed 
to assume this part of his function, and, therefore, has 
failed to succeed. 



288 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

In a certain city, a high-minded board member objected to the super- 
intendent's interesting himself, by assuming responsibility for the board 
member's radical advocacy of higher salaries for teachers. The super- 
intendent saved every other school enthusiast by judicious advice, but 
could not save this man, because he published in an interview this state- 
ment : " I would have advocated this measure even if the superintend- 
ent had opposed it." 

The pillar of the educational policy of the community is 
the school superintendent, whose business it is to uphold 
the board of education. Obviously, no weakling belongs 
in such an office. And that board conspicuously fails to 
understand human nature, which supposes that with years 
a man always gains moral strength. Often with years 
comes excessive caution, the outcome of timidity acquired 
from painful experience. 

We may divide all communities into three groups : — 

First, those which desire to have schools better than any in neigh- 
boring towns and cities. Such communities desire the leadership, and 
have pride in presenting the ideal in school affairs for the entire locality. 

Second, the communities that desire to have schools equal to the 
best. These communities wish to avoid the criticism of being poorer 
in educational advantages than the best of their neighbors, but for any 
one of various reasons are willing to content themselves with an 
imitative development of their schools. 

Third, the communities that desire to have schools as good as the 
average of their neighbors. These communities usually have schools 
considerably worse than the average and often fall into the contempt of 
their localities, for all people usually fall a little short of their ideals. 

The school superintendent who comes into a community must inform 
himself immediately to which class this particular body of people 
belongs. If his city does not belong to the first class, it will of course 
be his ambition to bring his community to the ideal of that class. 

The superintendent gets his board members as the gift 
of politics. In building up a strong educational policy in 
the community, the superintendent has a twofold task in 



EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF THE COMMUNITY 289 

relation to the board. He must do what he can, quietly 
and in sound ethics, to lead the people to elect, or the 
mayor to appoint, the very best men to the boards ; ^ and 
he must take whatever board he actually has and must try 
to make the best of it, for the advancement of the schools. 
Once in a great while, the superintendent will find on his 
hands a board eager to push educational matters. It is 
perilous to go too fast, though it is sound humanity to go 
as fast in the lead as the public can follow. The worst 
possible fortune of a school system is to get so far ahead 
of the people as to be lost by them. A balloon is not a 
safe model for the educational structure. 

The new and progressive superintendent in a community 
with poor schools is at once confronted with a very serious 
dilemma. It is almost certain that the community thinks 
that its schools are as good as those of neighboring com- 
munities. The educator does not care whether this is or 
is not true. He knows that the schools are not as good as 
they ought to be. Shall he try to revolutionize them at 
once, or shall he try gradually to bring them to higher and 
better conditions .-* If he attempts revolution, he is in im- 
mediate danger of total failure in his plans, and possibly 
of being forced to resign. A bad defeat will lower his 
prestige. On the other hand, if he contents himself with 
trivial changes, the danger confronts him of being charged 
thereafter of having, by acquiescence for a time, indorsed 
the very conditions to which he is, in reality, opposed. He 
who proceeds to advocate reforms is in peril of being out 
of a position, while he who does not advocate them must 
face the certainties of being able but very slowly to accom- 
plish reforms and to secure progress, and, in the meantime, 
of losing all opportunity to make a reputation that will be 

1 In Chapter II is discussed fully this matter of the qualities of a good board member. 



290 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

useful to him in the future in increases of salary and in 
improvement of tenure, either when remaining in the same 
community or when securing positions elsewhere. Only 
the progressive educator has a progressive salary. To be 
content with one's schools is necessarily to be content with 
one's income from his service. Unfortunately, the con- 
verse is not always true. 

The question as to which horn of this dilemma to seize is 
one that, like most other practical questions of hfe, involves 
problems of relation. In a small community of people of 
intelligence, the superintendent who knows his own mind 
clearly and has strong will power and equally strong powers 
of persuasion is entirely safe in advocating important reforms. 
On the other hand, the superintendent who has secured his 
election with difficulty, and who with a large city to under- 
stand sees in that city no strong and progressive cultural 
element, cannot safely advocate at once many important 
reforms. Most communities do not answer either descrip- 
tion, but fall between these extremes, and not many school 
superintendents are very clear in their minds as to what 
should immediately be done and how to do it successfully. 

Eliminating the elements of the personality and powers 
of the superintendent, and also of the size of the city, we 
may profitably analyze the elements of the problem that 
are afforded by the cultural quality of the community. 
The forces in American municipalities that make for intel- 
ligence and morality may be classified along several lines 
that intersect one another. In modern American life 
there are five great social institutions: the State, with 
its politicians, office-holders, voters, and other citizens; 
the Church, with its clergy and laity; the Family; and 
Occupation or Business, with its professional, its employ- 
ing, and its employed classes; and the School, with its 



EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF THE COMMUNITY 29 1 

teachers and pupils. Of these social institutions, the State 
is the only one that is all-inclusive. The Church in- 
cludes a greater or smaller proportion of the population. 
The Family includes a large majority, yet in hotels and 
boarding and lodging houses are many individuals that are 
isolated units in respect to family relations. The School 
obviously includes only a small proportion of the com- 
munity. Business or Occupation includes practically all 
men, and but few women, and almost no children under 
sixteen years of age. 

Studying these divisions of the people of his community, 
the superintendent is inclined to look somewhat as follows 
upon these various classes of people. The politicians will 
be interested in the schools, if at all, chiefly as affording 
opportunities to strengthen their friends and themselves 
by one or all of the various forms of political abuse that 
are known as corruption. Very few politicians voluntarily 
work for the improvement of the public schools. Those 
who do work for school betterment are invaluable. The 
officeholders are men chiefly busied with the affairs of 
their offices and are seldom well acquainted with school 
matters. The voters are chiefly workingmen, poor, well- 
to-do, or rich, who have neither time nor ability to inform 
themselves intelligently about school matters. As for 
the other citizens, chiefly the women and children (save in 
the States where women may vote either upon all questions 
or at least in school matters), all that they can do is to 
look on. The educator who looks for much practical sup- 
port from the clergy in his work of reforming schools will 
generally be disappointed. Clergymen of any denomina- 
tion who take much interest in the schools are likely to do 
almost or quite as much harm as good, owing to the re- 
sentment that they are apt to arouse. There are notable 



292 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

exceptions, but the principle is too well understood to need 
discussion. What the superintendent can get the clergy 
to do that is really valuable, is occasionally to preach ser- 
mons on the importance of education, and similarly in con- 
versation to interest people by discussions of the relation 
of education to intelligence and morality. Many of them 
will not give this support unless the suggestion comes from 
educators. The clergy, by speaking well of the educators 
in the schools, tend to increase the prestige of the educa- 
tional profession ; but for a clergyman, or for the clergy 
generally in a community, to advocate special educational 
measures is usually injurious to the cause of progress. 
As for the laity in the churches, they constitute by far the 
most important element in the city for the support of good 
schools. As a general proposition, men who are church 
members and active in church work can be relied upon to 
support all measures of educational progress. Similarly, 
the women who are influential in the institutional work of 
the churches are apt to be equally influential in the educa- 
tional life of the community. 

The non-church element is always disorganized. It contains some 
of the brightest people of the community, but it contains also most of 
those discontented souls who, having made a failure of life, resent 
success in others. 

The efforts that have been made in the cities of the 
United States to interest the fathers of the school children 
in the schools have usually proven fruitless. The Ameri- 
can father, whether a business manager or a clerk, a me- 
chanic or manual laborer, is seldom deeply concerned for 
the educational welfare of his children. He is too busy to 
attend to these matters.^ The American mothers likewise 

1 It is certainly one of the misfortunes of the modern American regime that American 
fathers can find no time to visit the schools of their children. 



EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF THE COMMUNITY 293 

are usually too busy with home affairs to interest them- 
selves as a class in even those matters lying outside of the 
home that are as near to the home interests as are the 
affairs of the schools.^ 

The children and youth attending school and the older 
persons attending evening school and free public lectures 
offer a field in which the school superintendent can work 
with immediate good results in his efforts to influence the 
educational sentiment of the community. 

With regard to Business or Occupation, the divisions of 
the American people are at the present time so numerous 
that it is difficult to discuss briefly the relation of the per- 
sons engaged in the professional and industrial world to 
those who are charged with the educational interests of the 
community. Any analysis must necessarily be incomplete. 
Of the members of the learned professions, — the clergy- 
men, the physicians, the lawyers, the journalists, and the 
teachers, — it is safe to say that the first believe in good 
schools, that is, in schools better than the community has 
already attained. As for the physicians, almost without 
exception, they are too much concerned with the interests 
of health to be deeply interested in matters of intelligence. 
The majority of physicians are bitter critics of schools. 
The very theory of school life is opposed to the cultiva- 
tion of physical size and strength.^ As a class, lawyers 
are engaged in legislation and in controversy. Their work 
is destructive and defensive rather than constructive. In 
general scholarship the legal profession is still inferior to 

^ Mothers' clubs are often efficient and helpful when guided by educators ; and the num- 
ber of mothers interested in the schools is ten to one of the fathers. 

* That in most persons some intellectual activity is compatible with health is, of course, 
true; but in most persons, it is likewise true that the activity of the mind is at the expense of 
the greatest welfare of the body. The mind wears out the body. The theory of education is 
that study transmutes the physical life into mental power by draining off the surplus of physical 
vitality to the uses of the brain. Education often draws far too heavily upon the vital reserves. 



294 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

the clergy, and the tendency is constantly toward a smaller 
and smaller proportion of scholarly lawyers.^ Among the 
journalists, there will always be found a considerable pro- 
portion of widely read and thoughtful men, who can give 
the greatest assistance to the schools in their educational 
propaganda.^ 

The teachers themselves in the community, both the 
large number engaged in public schools and the relatively 
small number engaged in private schools, may be relied 
upon as enthusiasts in education. But at the present time 
a very large proportion of the teachers are women. It is 
an unfortunate feature of the female character that all mat- 
ters are taken personally, and very few women are inter- 
ested in raising the salaries or improving the tenure of any 
other woman. Since these two points are chief among the 
interests of the schools, it follows that the usefulness of 
women in influencing educational progress is not very great. 
Further, few of them are married, and many of them are 
imported into the community for but temporary sojourn ; 
and as they have there but few friends, their opportunities 
to reach and to influence the adult voter are rather limited.^ 

With regard to all other learned professions it may be said that no 
one of them particularly conduces to the development of interest in 
elementary and secondary education. 

We come now to the various purely economic occupations 
of men, which may be divided into three groups of employ- 
ers, — the manufacturers, the merchants, and the farmers, 
— and into the innumerable classes of the wage-earners. 
The manufacturers are usually interested in the practical 

1 Time was when the lawyers often were fine classical scholars. There are now very few 
such instances among men who practice at the bar. 

2 Unfortunately, there are, even yet, in the journalistic profession many men who have 
not had high school and college educations. Among such persons there are often severe and 
unfriendly critics of the schools. 

^ In States where women vote, the influence of the women teachers is often felt in elec- 
tions, and that influence is usually for good. 



EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF THE COMMUNITY 295 

lines of education that lead to knowledge and skill in 
the industrial arts and in the sciences. The merchants 
are more interested in the commercial subjects of the 
advanced grammar grades and of the high school or 
academy. Among American farmers, there are but few 
who care much about the cause of general education. Few 
farmers are interested in town or city school systems, for 
the very obvious reason that they do not spend their years 
in towns or cities, though with the increase of wealth of the 
American farmer, the farming class is gradually coming 
to reside in town during the winter.^ 

The practical school superintendent will not spend very much time 
in thus analyzing the elements of the population in his community, but 
he wiU have in mind the general facts and the main points of the situa- 
tion. He knows what proportion of his community is interested in 
these various lines of activity. To illustrate : One man finds that his 
municipality is chiefly commercial, with a small manufacturing and agri- 
cultural element, and with strong churches and other cultural associa- 
tions. Another man finds that his community is largely manufacturing 
in population, with some agricultural workers in the outlying districts, 
and with but a small trading element. In such a community the 
churches are apt to be weak. The first community will have a complex 
social organization of lodges and councils of secret societies ; while the 
second probably will have comparatively few such societies, but strong 
trades unions. In an industrial community, most of the manufacturers 
are noncompetitors, while many of the merchants are business rivals ; 
therefore, it follows that in the manufacturing community the leading 
citizens will be inclined to work together in any public cause, while in 
a commercial community there will be much more friction among 
the leading people. The school superintendent must hold these facts 
in mind when he is disposed to drive forward in the direction of a par- 
ticular object, such as the extension of high school work or the improve- 
ment of elementary teachers' salaries. 

1 The comment in the text is not meant to be prejudicial to fanners, for in fact those chil- 
dren who are brought up in the outdoor life of the farm, and who leave school at from four- 
teen to sixteen years of age, to spend the rest of their lives in active outdoor work, are the 
physical source of the vitality of the American people. See note as to education and 
health, page 293. 



296 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Taken still more broadly, American communities differ 
vastly in respect to the average per capita wealth of the 
citizens, and particularly in respect to the number of fami- 
lies that have great wealth. In some American communi- 
ties of ten thousand people, the average amount of wealth 
liable to taxation for every child is less than five hundred 
dollars, while in at least one community the amount of 
wealth liable to taxation per child is fifteen thousand 
dollars. Obviously, the greater the wealth of the com- 
munity, the easier it is for the school superintendent to 
elevate his community to the financial standard of a high 
rate of school expenditure per child, which in general 
means a high quality of education. The average cost of 
education annually per child differs greatly in American 
communities, being as low as ten dollars in some com- 
munities of considerable size, and as high as ninety dollars 
in other communities.^ Similarly, the amount of wealth 
invested in educational facilities per capita for school chil- 
dren differs greatly from but a few dollars to more than a 
thousand. As a general proposition, it may be said that in 
good schools in American cities to-day, the annual cost per 
capita is at least forty dollars, while the permanent invest- 
ment in buildings, furniture, equipment, and apparatus is 
at least two hundred and fifty dollars per child. Even on 
these bases, the current cost and the permanent invest- 
ments are not nearly as high as they ought to be. 

With reference to the various classes of people in the 

1 There has been frequent dispute as to the equitable basis for the estimate of the per 
capita cost of education, whether it should be annual enrollment, or average attendance, or 
actual days' attendance. No one of these bases is entirely satisfactory. Total enrollment 
means a very different matter in one community from what it means in another. In some 
communities, the population is transient, and there are many people who move in and out 
during the year, whose children, though they do not attend for an entire year, greatly swell 
the total number enrolled. On the other hand, days' attendance is unsatisfactory, because 
helping absentees on their return to school is a large part of the teacher's work. 



EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF THE COMMUNITY 297 

community, the first principle of action on the part of the 
school superintendent, in his desire and effort to interest 
the whole body of people in the cause of education, is to 
reach prominent and influential individuals. This is neces- 
sarily a delicate matter. Sometimes, boards of education 
resent any personal activity on the part of the school 
superintendent in seeking to reach citizens outside of the 
board. However, until this is done, the school superin- 
tendent will have no fulcrum for his lever. The hope 
for good schools does not rest in boards of education 
but in the educational policy of the general p7iblic. Many 
and many a measure of reform has been forced through 
a board of education contrary to the judgment and in 
spite of the prejudices of the majority of the board. 
What a community wants, the board, in the long run, must 
surrender. Further, no school superintendent will be able, 
for any great length of time, to get much more for the 
schools than the real leaders of the community actually 
desire. Consequently, the man who has made a religion 
of humanity in his work as a school superintendent will 
take his earliest opportunity, and all later opportunities as 
far as possible, to educate the leaders in public affairs. 
Occasionally, he will find a man, otherwise not prominent, 
who will constitute himself a leader in the cause of educa- 
tion. Such an enthusiast is invaluable, since he has made 
no enemies in other causes. Within a year or two of his 
arrival, the competent school superintendent will be able 
to look upon the map of his community, and to say, "Here, 
there, is a man or woman upon whom I can rely for the 
support of this or that measure." Sometimes, the superin- 
tendent finds that a suggestion of a citizen to a board mem- 
ber is more efficacious than his own suggestion of that 
improvement. The board of education, like himself, is 



298 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

governed by the echo of the community. One successful 
kindergarten leads to a dozen. A single high-salaried 
high school teacher creates an appetite for better teachers 
in all the schools. 

Certain practical questions arise. Shall the school super- 
intendent have his monthly report printed in the newspaper 
after being read by the board .? Generally, the larger 
the community the more desirable is such publication. 
Shall a school superintendent ever outline a particular 
policy and publish its main points before presenting the 
case to a committee of the board or to the board as a 
whole } The more important the measure, the more neces- 
sary is it to throw the matter publicly upon the community 
before bringing it to the board, or at the very time of bring- 
ing it to the board. Often the board of education will be 
disposed immediately to discountenance a school improve- 
ment plan that they would have been compelled to con- 
sider carefully, if it had first been presented by the public 
press and by the educational leaders of the community. 
A school superintendent, however, must show the great- 
est discretion in his mode of presenting matters to 
the public or to groups of people outside of the board. 
Let no superintendent fail to remember that he is sup- 
ported by the money of the public, of which the board is 
no more than a trustee. He is, indeed, the employee of the 
community rather than of the board. The superintendent 
will seldom get from the board more than the active educa- 
tion enthusiasts of the community are willing to ask and to 
work for. Not infrequently in American communities there 
have been established features of progress, such as manual 
training, for which the mind of the community had been 
inadequately prepared, and which soon were removed by the 
hostile majority of a new board. Consequently, it is well 



EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF THE COMMUNITY 299 

to take the community into one's confidence, and to let the 
people know the reasons and the advantages of improve- 
ments, either proposed or in actual course of installation. 
Generally, it is not worth while for a school superintendent 
or for a body of supervising principals to accomplish any 
reforms in the schools at the cost of the least log-rolling 
or "politics " or pledges. Even the most innocent manip- 
ulations are apt to recoil upon their managers. The neces- 
sity of such manipulation shows that the community is not 
ripe for the plan. What is really needed is preparation of 
the public mind. 

The question sometimes arises as to whether the school 
superintendent shall endeavor to convert the real enemies 
of schools : the taxpaying capitalist who, without children 
in the schools, thinks that he should be concerned only 
to keep the taxes down ; the municipal politician who is 
interested in having plenty of funds in the particular 
department where he can make something honestly or dis- 
honestly; the man of ignorance and prejudice who, with- 
out education, has made what he calls a " success in life." 
The time spent upon endeavor to reform and to recon- 
struct the hearts and minds of the opponents of the school 
system is usually time wasted. The very effort to influ- 
ence such persons is commonly misconstrued and taken 
as a confession of weakness. Furthur than this, the facts 
and arguments presented are usually misunderstood, and 
are used later to the disadvantage of the schools. The 
best policy to pursue with regard to noisy opponents of 
school progress is to make war upon them in public and 
private, in order to defeat their measures and to reduce 
their influence. Any course of friendship with them is in 
peril of leading to "selling out" to them sooner or later. 
Any agreements made with them are apt to be considered 



300 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

as pledges. In truth, the sooner the school superintendent 
in a community of any size appreciates the fact that he is 
engaged in a warfare, and that he is the champion of the 
children, of the youth, and of the ambitious parents, and 
that he is the custodian of the cause of culture, the sooner 
will he attain a dignified and respected position in the 
community, and the sooner will he be able to do some- 
thing effective there in the sacred cause of popular 
intelligence. 

The line of argument for the improvement of the schools 
in any American municipality is straight and clear. May 
each man of us pursue it manfully ! 

The first provision for compulsory attendance at school 
was adopted about the middle of the seventeenth century 
by the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut The 
Act passed by the General Court of Connecticut contained 
provisions somewhat as follows : It alleged that the parents 
and masters, ** through tender respect to their own cause 
and business, and not duly considering the good of their 
children and apprentices," neglected their duty to provide 
them with an education both literary and practical. The 
Act also attached a penalty for violation of the law for 
compulsory attendance, and authorized duly appointed 
officers to prosecute neglectful parents and masters. 

The compulsory attendance laws in the most progres- 
sive States now provide for such attendance of all children 
between the ages of seven and fifteen, thus assuring them 
of an elementary education for a period of at least seven 
years. This is too short a time; from an educational 
point of view, it would be decidedly better to require such 
attendance from the ages of eight to seventeen, inclusive. 
Without discussing here the reasons for the reaching over 
of education into the adolescent period and for beginning 



EDUCATIONAL POLICY OF THE COMMUNITY 301 

the compulsory attendance period a year later, I desire to 
call attention to certain probable results from such a law. 

1. There would be a considerably larger attendance in 
the schools, both public and private. 

2. There would be State supervision of private schools 
as well as of public schools, to the end that the nation and 
the community might be assured that the children were 
receiving, in school, an education both thorough and broad. 

3. The establishment of schools for defectives and in- 
corrigibles, for most of the incorrigibles and habitual 
absentees are either defective in their special senses or 
general health, or deficient in their moral qualities. Such 
a school could not be maintained as an integral part of the 
public school system to the extent of having the same 
kind of teachers and the same kind of subjects. In fact, 
all such special schools should be schools in which the 
children are isolated from their ordinary surroundings. 

4. Such compulsory attendance would necessitate in 
most municipalities a truant officer or a body of truant 
officers who should give their entire time and work to 
visiting homes and determining whether or not the chil- 
dren should be sent to the parental home schools. 

5. A considerably increased budget for annual expenses 
would be required. A good home school for incorrigibles 
and habitual absentees cannot be maintained except at a 
considerable cost. A community of ten thousand people, 
with the ordinary proportion of factory and commercial 
element, in the year would probably have from fifteen to 
thirty boys in attendance, and might have from five to ten 
girls also, who should, of course, be in a separate school 
building. The home school or schools should have gardens, 
domestic animals, woods, fields, and workshops, as well 
as dormitories and recitation rooms. The cost annually 



302 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

would scarcely be less than six thousand or eight thousand 
dollars.^ 

6. An ordinary municipality of from ten to twenty-five 
thousand people would doubtless find it valuable to estab- 
lish also in various parts of the city ungraded schools, 
in which children who are apparently incorrigible or 
decidedly inclined to be irregular in attendance could be 
placed for a time, to see whether or not they should be 
sent to the reform school. 

In half a generation, that is, fifteen years, the cultural 
quality of a community may be transformed for the better or 
for the worse by the education of the youth in the schools. 
Given a poor school system to begin with, very little can 
be done in one year, but more can be done in two years, 
and still more in three years. It requires the entire school 
life of the child, from four or five years of age to eighteen 
or nineteen, to insure the permanence of the cultural im- 
provement of the community. The school superintendent 
who succeeds in securing kindergartens in the school sys- 
tem, must wait nine years before the children who have 
had the kindergarten training can reach the high school, 
and at least thirteen or fourteen years before they become 
voting citizens. Consequently, the educator must appeal 
for permanence of reform, and at the same time he must 
make it clear that the people of the community are not to 
look for immediate results. The process of education is 
distinctly a process of " casting bread upon the waters," 
believing that it will return "after many days."^ In that 
faith, education makes all its great gains. 

1 It is profitable to compare the per capita cost in such a reform school with that of crim- 
inals in penitentiaries. Most criminals are young. It costs but a tenth as much to educate 
as to reform. Depravity is unnatural, a turning away from the law in our souls. 

2 The argument for educational improvement has been presented in Chapters II and III, 
and is again presented in substance in Chapter XIV. 



CHAPTER XIV 
EDUCATION FOR SUPERVISION! 

To persons who look upon life and society superficially, 
it may appear that a school superintendent or a school 
principal is not a ruler of men, but only of children. In 
truth, however, he is a ruler of men who guides them by 
his ideas and influences them by his sentiments. In his- 
toric fact, some of the men who in their day and generation 
have dictated to their fellows have held public office in- 
commensurate with their power, and sometimes no public 
office at all. The emperors of Rome were not constituted 
as such, but they gathered to themselves power by a com- 
bination of apparently ordinary offices. 

The competent superintendent aims to fit himself so well 
for his duties that he can succeed anywhere, in a most 
backward as well as in a most progressive community, in 
elevating and improving the condition of the schools. He 
must be a student of supervision and also possess a wide 
range of knowledge of men and things, and considerable 
practical experience in affairs in the largest sense. His 
has become a specialized profession for which a highly 
specialized training must be provided. 

The real ruler of men in a republic is he who is con- 
sulted upon many public matters. It is immaterial whether 
he has actual governmental power. Most of the great 
things of this world are necessarily carried out by the 

1 This chapter is based upon an address given before the National Education Association, 
in Detroit in 1901. 

303 



304 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

servants and clerks. The very fact that the school super- 
intendent is engaged in supervising a large body of men, 
women, and children, and in carrying out the will of the 
board of education, shows that supervision and administra- 
tion constitute a form of control of society. There are two 
kinds of power in this world. One kind is political and eco- 
nomic ; the other is intellectual and moral. The power of the 
superintendent is partly the former but largely the latter. 
He has, therefore, a wonderful opportunity. While his 
field in the community is smaller than that of the mayor, the 
power of a competent man in a superintendency is greater 
than that of the holder of any other American public office. 
He suggests and influences legislation. He carries on the 
executive work, and he is judge and jury in many judicial 
matters. In charge of the schools, he actually rules at 
least twenty per cent of the community. It is true that 
the subjects of his rule are mostly children, but it is also 
true that he who rules the children to a great extent rules 
the parents. I am using the word "rule" in its American 
sense, in which it carries no color of despotism, but means 
management, direction, and service.^ 

It is the business of the board of education to remove 
the tyrant, and to cut out from the school system every 
manifestation of growing tyranny. Very often the super- 
intendent's tyranny is necessitated by the condition of 
school affairs, as, for example, when it is not possible to 
secure a board meeting for several months in succession, 
owing to factionalism among board members.^ 
, Partly because school superintendents are beginning to 
realize their power, there is growing up a new profession of 

1 There are, no doubt, instances still too common in which the school superintendent rules 
in the old sense of feudal tyranny. 

' The remedy for this sort of evil has been suggested in the chapter, " The Board of 
Education." 



EDUCATION FOR SUPERVISION 305 

supervision. The schools are becoming a democratic hier- 
archy, composed of several classes, — the supervisors, the 
principals, the teachers, the older and the younger children. 
There is an equality of all, but this is equality of relation one 
to another in opportunity. There is no equality in knowledge 
and power. Democracy greatly needs this new profession 
of supervision. The very appearance of such a profession 
shows that civilization is rising and developing. The whole 
body of teachers is becoming differentiated into experts of 
various kinds : the expert administrator, the expert super- 
visor, the expert teacher of a subject, the expert teacher of 
a grade. This differentiation into various classes and kinds 
of teachers is accompanied by an integration of each class 
and of each kind of teacher into a separate body. It is 
commonly said that there are five hundred thousand teach- 
ers in the United States. Within a generation, while we 
shall continue to have teachers as a body, as we have busi- 
ness men as a body, we shall also, as in the case of business 
men, divide them up according to their occupation, into at 
least five groups, and the members of these five groups will 
work together as individuals and as separate groups by 
themselves. The high school teachers will form one body, 
superintendents and principals another, college professors 
another, grammar school teachers another, primary teach- 
ers still another, and there may be a separate body of 
kindergartners. This differentiation is desirable and will 
correspond with the differentiation of the medical profes- 
sion into physicians, surgeons, and specialists, together with 
their invaluable assistants, the nurses. These various bodies 
of experts will be developed largely by an enthusiastic pur- 
suit of certain studies — sociology, economics, history,^ 

1 In my use of the term ** history " I mean something much more than a mere chronological 
series of facts. I mean the life and the motives behind the facts. This may be called the 



306 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

physiology, child psychology, law, and literature, as well 
as of such special studies as pedagogy and history of 
education. The great peril of the educational profession 
to-day, as in all times past, is lack of opportunity for self- 
alienation. The teacher goes through grammar school, 
high school, and college, and then issues forth into the 
world intending to express the very things that have been 
recently impressed upon his mind and character. This 
means that he is little more than a conduit of culture. He 
has no opportunity to go out into the world, to examine, and 
to experience, the results of culture. He does not see " real 
life." There is no line of demarcation between his dreams 
and his realities. He is apt to live in an artificial world of 
ideals and generalizations. In view of this peril, that man 
is fortunate who, in preparing for the work of administra- 
tion and supervision in schools, has been compelled to earn 
his own living by economic effort. Once in the special 
work of administration, while he needs to keep before him 
the vision of the ideal school, and to maintain relations with 
teachers' associations, he particularly needs daily contact 
with the forces of practical business. It is true that the 
administrator of schools cannot know too much. In a 
sense, it is true that he never knows enough. Especially 
is he apt to be deficient, in the very nature of his occupa- 
tion, in handling all matters which we generally class in 
the phrase, " practical affairs of common sense." 

Preparation for this profession, which requires so much 
knowledge and skill and common sense, is a much more 

philosophy of history, the doctrines of the rise and fall of nations, and analyses of the causes of 
growth and decay. I mean histoiy as written by such masters as Gibbons, Guizot, Lecky, 
Motley, Parkman, and Fiske, in their finest passages. History, in this sense, is the process 
by which the ideals (ra ovra) of Plato realize themselves, generation after generation, in the 
course of events by the building of institutions. It is the record of events that have affected 
the social welfare ; and events are the collisions of the selfish or social interests (purposes, 
desires, ideas) of mankind. 



EDUCATION FOR SUPERVISION 307 

serious matter than it is apt to be considered by those 
who have not actually undertaken the great work. The 
work itself is decidedly underestimated both in its quality 
and in its quantity. Because the superintendent is a public 
servant, the public is generally apt to belittle his position, 
not comprehending the real nature of the service that he 
ought to render. In truth, the American people are too 
much interested in the affairs of wealth and property and 
business, which shows that we are as yet only in the earlier 
stages of our civilization, being not sufficiently anxious 
about the affairs of the mind and soul which create prop- 
erty and make living itself worth while. 

A scholar wrote the Great Charter eight hundred years 
ago, A scholar wrote the Declaration of Independence. 
A scholar wrote the final draft of the Constitution of the 
United States. Our best men have never been too good 
for the duties of government. Certainly none has ever 
been too good and too well trained for the service of 
humanity through the education of the young. 

Schools are the agencies for the transmission of culture 
in its real sense, as the courts are the agencies for the 
transmission of the lesser inheritances, the lands, the goods, 
and the rights of the earth. In all educational systems, or 
in that concatenated order which passes for a system, we 
have singularly neglected the preparation of our youth for 
the highest duties, such as superintendencies, mayoralties, 
governorships, and other functions and offices of govern- 
ment. We have not gone far enough in our education of 
leaders. In view of this criticism (whose justice must be 
obvious to any student of municipal and national affairs in 
America), it is profitable to inquire, " What is the course 
and what is the goal of education .^ " 

First, we must acquire property in our own bodies, learn 



308 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

our own hands and feet, then add skill in tools, in games, 
and in athletics. Manual training has now come in, 
with its practice in the domestic and industrial arts ; and 
physical culture is at last recognized once more. We know 
that every human creature is worth most to himself and to 
us when he completely possesses himself. Next, we must 
acquire the facts of the senses, that is, world-knowledge ; 
and we have Nature study and science laboratories, social 
investigations, history, and geography. These furnish the 
elements of preparation for self-support. Hitherto, this 
world-knowledge has been for most men fragmentary and 
often incorrect. Yet humanity has blundered forward, 
thinking that the earth is flat, and that priests own God, 
and that kings are by the grace of God, that history is a 
series of accidents, and that whatever is, is fate. 

After getting this objective knowledge of the real world, 
the individual turns to himself, to his own soul and mind. 
Therefore, the wise teach others literature, philosophy, 
and religion, which reveal the soul of humanity. The be- 
ginning of this state is self-consciousness, and its end is 
self-control. Beyond this, few ever advance. ** Know thy- 
self " was almost the highest point reached by the philoso- 
phy of the Greeks. Yet there are two higher stages to 
which we may attain if we do not crystallize in character 
and mind at earlier stages. Beyond self-knowledge is self- 
direction among the forces and events and facts of Nature 
and of the human life. This self-direction is possible only 
to men of objective social knowledge. The earlier objec- 
tivity that leads to observational science and to industry is 
not enough. This later objectivity is not one of the senses 
so much as of the will, carrying one beyond truthfulness of 
vision to truthfulness of action, to self-revelation and self- 
direction in the world. Of every hero who has stood for 



EDUCATION FOR SUPERVISION 309 

his mission, even of every man who has risen in the world, 
these words of Arnold are true : — 

" He within 
Took measure of his soul and knew its strength, 
And by that silent knowledge day by day 
Was calm'd, ennobled, comforted, sustained." 

The philosopher Rosenkranz, in his volume, " The Science 
of Education," which is deservedly read by almost every 
educational apprentice in the United States and Germany, 
was unable to carry his argument further than this, the 
climax of individualism. The appeals by teachers to the 
desire of their disciples for property both as wealth and as 
income, the exhortations to self-knowledge for one's own 
sake and to self-control so as to win and to hold the 
respect of others, and the incitements to acquire power 
so as to make a place by one's own will for one's self in 
the world, are familiar to us all, both as students and as 
teachers. These appeals are absolutely necessary; they 
are as milk to babes and as meat to strong men. ** Seize 
your opportunities " is the maxim of those whose philoso- 
phy ends with self-control. ** Make your opportunities " 
is for those who are capable of self -direction. Some of 
the greatest names of history illustrate this exalted stage 
of culture; of these Napoleon is the most striking, the 
most startling, example. Higher than self-direction and 
social knowledge, but possible only to those who have 
conquered the forces of social habit and of social thought, 
is the stage whereon a man represents in his mind and will 
the best thoughts and purposes of humanity and, as such 
a representative, exercises social control. For this stage, 
our education, our very institutions, self-governing though 
we Americans may be, afford no adequate preparation. 
Social control is a state of the mind, completely absorbed 



310 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

in the affairs of society for its own sake, absorbed though 
never equally alive in any earlier state. 

Still higher than that education which enables a man to 
exercise social control with profit to society is the final 
goal of character, which is complete self-understanding 
and world-understanding without ambitions of any kind. 
This involves surrender to the great human moving forces. 
This was the life that Buddha is said to have lived. It is 
the life led by the men who have rendered the greatest 
service and have left the greatest influences in human 
history. This is not mere martyrdom, though it often 
involves martyrdom. It is not self-sacrifice, though it 
often involves self-sacrifice. It is not the surrender of 
personal ambitions, though it often involves such sur- 
render. It is not reconciliation with the world, for it is 
often opposition, lifelong and strenuous. It is the faith 
that what the soul believes ought to be is to be. It is 
determination that what ought to be must be. It is hard- 
ening to the task of bringing what ought to be into being 
by the complete utilization of all one's powers.^ Only 
men strong and wise and good can achieve this high- 
est stage of human development, which was set ideally 
before men in the person and life of Jesus. Thereby, he 
became the Saviour of mankind, not so much by his death 
as by his warfare. In a greater or less degree, every man 
who has rendered important service to mankind has lived 
this life of self-understanding and world-understanding 
and of unfailing energy. The fire has burned brilliantly 
within him, and often has given out, not only light, but also 
heat. 

^ In the final analysis, all great success depends upon three qualities: judgment, patience, 
and courage. Judgment depends upon knowledge and reason; patience, upon sympathy 
and strength ; but courage is a primal quality. When not native, occasionally it is bom in. 
the adolescent regeneration. 



EDUCATION FOR SUPERVISION 31 1 

Such a man is certain to be misunderstood, for the plain 
reason that only his equals can understand him, while he 
has but few equals. When he is dead, he is canonized. 
His record is seen in the monuments that he has left in 
ideas, institutions, buildings, books, regenerated souls made 
more human because larger and kinder and stronger. Such 
men have not all been saints, but they have all been heroes. 

The question at once arises as to whether an educational 
system can be so constructed as to assist Nature in pro- 
ducing such men. Clearly, the system cannot be so con- 
structed until the plan is proposed. We must see a need 
before we inquire how to meet it. What, then, is the need ? 

Our democracy has made singular choices of its rulers 
and servants. We employ some who cannot see even the 
facts of objective experience ; we employ others who are 
incapable of self-support ; and we employ many who have 
no self-reliance, but who, knowing nothing securely of 
themselves, wait to see what others will do or say. In 
fact, our citizenship is afraid of the selfishness of educated 
intelligence. To develop self-control, to raise men out of 
subordination to superiors, to achieve democracy, — educa- 
tion, elementary, secondary, and collegiate, can do much 
by employing the original self -activity of children and 
youth, and can do nothing otherwise. Unless education 
does produce self-reliance, the youth are better out in the 
struggles and temptations of life than at school or college. 

The truthful observer, clear-eyed, self-reliant, and he 
alone, can become the righteous servant-ruler in Church 
and State, in business and school and society. Many such 
self-understanding men may be called, but even of these 
only a few will be chosen for continued service. Upon 
these depends the further progress of a great and difficult 
civilization. 



312 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

But why is it all cannot become agents of social control 
in a nation of free equals ? We have done away with 
kings in the State, and with priests in the Church, and 
with patriarchs in the Family. We are doing away with 
men as masters in Business, and may some day dispense 
with our lords of the land. We have opened the School 
to all. Why do not all ascend to the very highest stages 
of culture, to be their own kings and priests, employers, 
teachers ? If the way up the Parnassus of the Muses is 
steep, that to the Olympus of the gods is sheer. It is, in- 
deed, difficult to master the great classics and the fine 
arts ; but it is much more difficult to master the sciences 
of humanity and the arts of the control of men. 

Sometimes, the early environment is so barren that it 
affords no proper and adequate nourishment for the mind 
struggling to compass the objects of the world. Some- 
times, and I doubt not that this is true in the case of at 
least forty per cent of the children of our race, the bodily 
apparatus is so defective, especially in the eyesight and 
external muscular accommodations of the eye, that the soul 
cannot find the real world or truly express itself in it.^ 
Many others cannot progress in culture because they must 
stop by the way for the means of existence. Of these 
early economic unfortunates, here and there one will 
nevertheless win his way forward, upward, till he sits by 
merit in the councils of State. After the stage of self- 
control is reached, further progress in culture becomes 
much more difficult. Getting beyond self-knowledge to 
intelligent self-direction and then on to competent right- 
eous social control is personal pioneering, for not only are 
there no teachers or books, save biographies seldom full 

* The books of Dr. Gould of England, dealing with the eye defects of certain famous 
literary folk, develop this subject fully. 



EDUCATION FOR SUPERVISION 313 

of truth, but even the philosophy of modern education 
until very recently could point out no path.^ 

Consider the spectacle of eighty millions of men, 
women, and children between our oceans, living in all 
these varied stages of culture, — so many in the earliest 
stages, so few in the last. Few are they who are capable 
of self-control ; very few are they who are capable of self- 
direction ; very, very few, a mere handful among so many, 
are fitted for social direction, only a fraction of those who 
are actually exercising social control. Consider, too, that 
Nature brings to birth very few geniuses able to rise with- 
out teaching to self-knowledge, self-control, self -direction, 
social direction toward the righteousness that is taught 
by the wisdom and goodness of a hundred centuries of the 
cumulative experience of unknown billions of men. Chil- 
dren of one Mother Earth, warmed and lighted by a single 
sun, joint heirs to the acquirements of countless genera- 
tions of creatures, which taught our very nerve cells the 
right ways to do things, disciples of the common human 
thought, developing for ourselves practically nothing, we 
have a common obligation and a common opportunity. 

And yet to develop our people — these eighty millions — 
our democracy spends for all kinds of education, private 
and public, of our immense national income, about one 
fifth as much as it spends for beverages to make us forget 
our troubles ! And there are educators so unaccustomed 
to the ratios of large figures as to compliment our people, 
to cheer the hearts of niggardly politicians, and to put 
stumbHng-blocks in the paths of the actual workers — 
the money-getters — in the cause of culture by exclaiming 
upon the liberality of a nation of eighty million people 
which, out of an income of one hundred billions a year, 

^ See Home, " Philosophy of Education." 



314 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

spends not so much as three hundred millions bn all forms 
of instruction, — a sum less than one half of what it spends 
on tobacco ! — of which paltry three hundred millions by 
far the largest amount is spent upon the very rudimentary 
education of reading, writing, and arithmetic. As long as 
tobacco costs scholarly men about as much as do their 
books ; as long as the single alcoholic drink, beer,^ for 
the men alone costs all our people several times as much 
as meat for men, women, and children together; as long 
as all our universities cost less than our war ships; as 
long as we are willing to spend on conquests more than 
we are willing to spend to irrigate our arid West ; as long 
as city slums endure ; as long as men, women, and children 
who work must work anywhere under inhuman condi- 
tions ; as long as the doors of opportunity are shut to so 
many, — so long we can regard neither our nation as a 
nation of well-educated people nor our schools as true ex- 
ponents of human culture. We are better than any other 
people, but we are only at the beginnings of wisdom and 
righteousness and wealth. The primary school graduate 
may possibly become self-supporting, the grammar school 
graduate may have learned enough to become a good 
citizen, the high school graduate may have developed 
some power of individual service ; but the college graduate 
ought to have some important and continuing contribution 
to make to his community and the wisdom to reconcile 



1 The A ftterzcan Grocer (the standard trade journal) estimated the total value, retail, of 
alcoholic liquors consumed by the American people in 1903 at $1,450,000,000, and that of tea 
and coffee combined at $300,000,000. Such figures, compared with the $225,000,000 spent on 
American public education, and the $275,000,000 spent upon all forms of American education, 
are very eloquent and rather disconcerting to those who talk much about the extravagance of 
Americans in education. All the great charitable legacies of 1903 in America amounted to 
but $75,000,000, while the inheritance and income taxes of England, less than half as rich as 
the United States, were over $250,000,000. Wc need to open our eyes wide to see these 
fact;. 



EDUCATION FOR SUPERVISION 315 

the conflicting interests of so many for the good of all. 
The lower schools are sending out boys and girls who 
know American history and are full of patriotism. But 
what of the college graduates? 

In the last generation of men and women, much was heard 
about preparation for social service — " He that would be 
great among you, let him be the servant of all and the 
minister of all." The converse is equally true. He that 
serves all rules all. The lesson of a longer experience is 
the need of preparation for social control. The old re- 
quired course is a thing of the past. No mere change of 
studies, however, can effect an essential change in the 
fitness of the Bachelor of Arts for either social service 
or for social control. At best, he may issue into the world 
intending to reform it ; at worst, he issues into it intending 
to master it ; sometimes, he hopes to find opportunities for 
acquiring more knowledge or greater skill; generally, his 
intention is to enjoy, not the world, but himself in the world. 
We need none of these men. We do not need men bent 
only on accumulating knowledge of specialties. We do 
not want masters. We do not accept reformers. The his- 
tory of the world is the miracle of constructive omniscience. 
We do not care for the aesthetic dilettanti, good only as 
critics. We object to eager executives seeking to convert 
the treasures of the world's labor-power into plunder for 
themselves. We need, and we use, self-reliant men who 
see the facts of Nature, who are interested in the welfare 
of humanity, who are ready both to serve and to rule, who 
are keen for action after thought. Especially in education 
we need men who, able to take care of themselves, when 
in office can do this so easily as to give their entire atten- 
tion to taking care of the schools. By what studies may 
such men be prepared? 



3l6 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

The fundamental science of the modern time is biology. 
The man destined for social control ought to understand 
the elements of natural life, that he may see humanity 
as it really is, — offspring or kindred of all the living 
creatures of this realm of one Father.^ 

A knowledge of physiology is required far beyond the 
compass of a course of lectures or of an abridged text- 
book. Some of the most important questions any society 
of men and women have to solve arise solely from the 
general ignorance of fundamental human facts. The com- 
petent, if in authority, could easily dispose of them. The 
tenement houses in the slums ; the children with neglected 
teeth and eyes and bodies ; the widows bringing up orphans 
in the awful poverty of homes in which mothers worry all 
night after working outside of them all day; social evils 
and wrongs, resulting from customs quite contrary to 
physiological facts, — sorrows like these are remediable 
by competent and righteous men in business and politics. 

Psychology has extremely important contributions for 
the man who is to exercise social control. The ability to 
locate individuals in such-and-such stages of culture has 

1 The modern biology is a vety much larger matter than is indicated by the mechanical 
theories of a decade ago. It now concerns itself with the processes by which the soul takes 
possession of matter and converts it to its uses. One sees the finest evidences of the value of 
the new theories in " Whence and Whither of Man," by Tyler; "Psychology of Adoles- 
cence," by Hall ; and " Mental Development," by Baldwin, both volumes, but especially 
the second on social and ethical interpretations. The purpose of this work is to discuss the 
administrative and supervisory aspects of education. I take space only to warn youthful 
readers not to be discouraged in their first studies in biology, and not to suppose that a 
mastery of the elements more than opens the door of the vestibule to its palace of truths. 

It is impossible to summarize in a sentence or a paragraph some of the important edu- 
cational conclusions to be derived from biology. I but suggest a single problem, which is that 
of the survival of the property sense which begins in animals and which characterizes most 
children at the age of twelve, and, when accompanied by an arrested mental development, 
produces the typical rich man. This property sense, which enabled the animals to survive 
through the winter and has made civilization possible, is purely a biological quality without 
psychological content, for it is always unconscious and therefore self-deceiving. 

But see the defense of it in " Statistics and Economics," by Mayo-Smith, who held that 
but for rich men all wealth would be squandered. He considered them reservoirs of wealth. 



EDUCATION FOR SUPERVISION 317 

countless uses. The study of human nature belongs to 
the rulers of men, for it not only makes them rulers, but 
it qualifies them to rule well. We can save society from 
becoming the prey of the able but evil, by producing the 
wise and good, who may overcome them. 

Sociology discusses the history and the missions of the 
great social institutions of Family, Church, Occupation, 
Government, and School ; the nature and the organization 
of human society ; the combinations and collisions of men. 
Such a science serves for the youth about to be graduated 
from the courses of formal education as the final interpre- 
tation of this human life as it really is. 

I assume that the college course is at least four years 
long. I know of no reason inherent in the nature of 
young men or in the constitution of society why a young 
man should come from college before he is twenty-two 
years of age. I hear no oracle of God commanding early 
specialization. I hear rather the divine words : " First the 
blade, then the ear; last the full corn in the ear." 

Still another line of inquiry invites the consideration of 
those who mean to prepare young men generously for the 
supreme work of life ; this line includes history, economics, 
political science, and law. 

History is both the treasure-house of human facts and 
a means of finding the truth. 

Economics is the arithmetic of the collegiate course. 
No man is competent to rule his fellows who does not 
understand the nature of capital, wages, rent, interest, 
profit, and taxes; just as no man is competent to buy 
or sell merchandise until he knows addition, subtraction, 
multiplication, and division. By this standard, most men 
in office and in business exercising social control are 
incompetent. When this great nation at last seriously 



3l8 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

undertakes the higher education, and seriously enters 
upon its mission of developing the human spirit, the 
college graduate will understand political economy.^ 

Political science aims to disclose the history and prin- 
ciples of government. It is important that the ruler of 
men in a democracy should know the scope and intent of 
democracy itself, and its location of sovereignty in those 
only who can exercise it. Political science demonstrates 
why the strong rule, just as sociology demonstrates why 
the good ought to rule. 

The man who is to exercise authority needs to know the 
elements of the law of his nation, his State, and his com- 
munity, the rights and duties of citizens, the nature of 
property in lands and goods, the principles of contract, 
and the definitions and sanctions of crime. Especially 
should he know the nature of corporations, private, public, 
and quasi-public, for corporations are the greatest devices 
for progress, cultural, political, economic, yet sprung from 
human brains. Every American city is a corporation ; and 
the advance from despotism to democracy in government 
is not greater than the advance from persons to corpora- 
tions as the agencies of business. 

The youth broadly prepared to rule should know the 
language and the literature of his race. He cannot know 
these too well. He must have an adequate command of 
thought-imagery. This is a requirement not only of con- 
tent-knowledge, but also of skill in the arts of speech and 
print. 

The man exercising social control should be able to see 
this American society as foreigners see it. Let him study 
a foreign language, master the great works of a foreign 
literature, and learn to think at his will in the terms of a 

1 See Chapter XVI. 



EDUCATION FOR SUPERVISION 319 

foreign character. If possible, let him travel in Europe 
during at least one vacation. 

No subject is to be studied for its discipline alone. In 
the wealth of subjects to-day, we ought to choose subjects 
for their content as well as for their logic. 

This prepared servant of society ought to know for him- 
self, not by books merely, nor by observation merely, but 
in personal experience, the life conditions, both economic 
and domestic, of the men and women who are working for 
humanity in some great industry, or in agriculture, or in 
commerce. He will find that most of the great working 
millionaires are caricatured by reporters and by casual 
acquaintances who are as incompetent to understand their 
motives and capacities as our children are to understand 
their teachers. 

Every college graduate, especially one who is to be an 
educator, should be trained physically, manually, organic- 
ally. He should know something about the fine arts and 
music and architecture, that our social life may be more 
attractive and the appearance of our business buildings 
and of our homes be more beautiful. We have long since 
learned that the culture of the classics and the discipline 
of the mathematics are insufficient for modern life. 

Meanwhile, during these four years, the time of the very 
best training in any man's life, the youth who is being 
fitted for the authority, duty, and responsibility of social 
control should be learning self-government by practicing 
its principles in a self-governing student body and in self- 
governing student organizations. Any college that cannot 
maintain student government is in need of a new faculty, 
and its trustees sin against the light. If half-trained coun- 
cils can oversee the self-government of great cities, full of 
ignorant people, some of whom are bad, a college faculty 



320 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

can do as well by bodies of the finest young men in the 
land. They may not be what the faculty wants; and 
again, the faculty may not be what the nation needs ; but 
the young men are the best God has yet intrusted to this 
people. 

The college belongs to the democracy of culture. Its 
student body is a republic of free equals. Its alumni are 
brothers. It ought to be the treasury of all that is " noble 
and of good report." Its teachers ought to be broad- 
minded workers for social betterment. By profession, 
every teacher exercises a degree of social control. In 
what spirit does he exercise it .? None of us will expect 
that the deepest lessons interpreted from the printed pages 
of the masters can eventuate at once in the action or even 
in the character of the graduate or post graduate. But we 
not only can expect — we ought to know — that the young 
men and women sent into the world from these cities of 
the light will manifest, in moments of opportunity, some 
memory of the wisdom of the great and some emotion of 
the righteousness taught by them. The righteousness of 
a cultured society would transform the wealth and the 
labor power of the world into opportunities for intelligence, 
health, happiness, homes, and work worth doing for all. 
Every teacher fails utterly of his duty both to his pupils 
and to the mighty dead, who through pain, toil, and 
danger have won progress for humanity, when he fails 
to bring to his students the message of social obHgation. 

The scholar in politics .'' Yes, and only the scholar 
trained to displace all others. The scholar in business ? 
Yes, and the scholar first of all.^ But in politics and busi- 
ness such scholars need training and knowledge as much 

* We need optimistic ideals with the most advanced views and the most progressive 
standards that any man can possibly think out. We need the compelling power of new 
truths as fast as they can be discovered to surprise the world into progress. 



EDUCATION FOR SUPERVISION 32 1 

better than at present offered in the schools as modern life 
surpasses earlier conditions. Education ought no longer 
to lag behind the actual progress of the times. To-day 
Home and Church are visibly disintegrating. The School, 
by integration, grows more and more. 

The making of men for social control is to-day the 
opportunity of the higher education.^ To this we are 
developing. Past and present are unfolding the future. 
The college stands at the critical point. In this nation, 
its youth of talent are as the water of the river of life. 

To State and Church comes the challenge of the poet, 
and the question of Lowell is the question ^ of the living 
Christ in history : — 

" Have you founded your thrones and altars then 
On the bodies and souls of living men, 
And think ye that building shall endure 
Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor ? " 

It may be that our historic mission is but to do better 
than any preceding people, and then, like all others, to 
fail, leaving lessons to instruct a new people in the valley 
of the Amazon or to revitalize an ancient people on the 
shores of the China Sea. And it may be that the Ameri- 
can republic shall become the center of one self-governing 
world-nation, bounded by the circumpolar seas and the 
signs of the Zodiac, postponing the day of doom by the 
thousand years of a millennium of human righteousness. 

1 Nearly all our American legislators are lawyers. Time was when most English legis- 
lators were landlords. It is conceivable that the time may come when most legislators will 
be educators. Why not ? 

2 It is not to be expected that many people in any generation of the near future will be 
able to dream dreams or to see visions of an age of opportunity for all, of freedom from handi- 
caps by birth, of entire absence of all inherited or government-based privileges of property, 
or station, and of equal justice at law and before the bar of public opinion. But it is not 
only to be expected but required that sortie people in this age shall be the leaders of thought 
and therefore the leaders of the men of action, by whom the more desirable future, stage by 
stage, may be brought into being. 



CHAPTER XV 

GETTING THE OFFICE 

Given the young man who is theoretically well prepared 
for educational administration or supervision, and who has 
had the indispensable two or three years of actual class 
room teaching, what course shall he pursue to get the 
desirable opportunity in which to demonstrate his fitness 
for social control ? In the exigency of the times, a man 
who has just been graduated from a normal school or a 
college may be able to secure an independent principalship 
or superintendency and become the medium between the 
board of education and the community. Let him not sup- 
pose that he is prepared to exercise competently the 
authority of his position. Even the man who has had 
five or ten years of experience in class room and principal- 
ship finds in his first superintendency that there is much 
to learn. Administration and supervision are each differ- 
ent matters from the other, and each is different from 
teaching. But it is not with these matters that it is pro- 
posed to deal in this chapter. The question here is simply 
how, by direct appeal to boards of education, to secure an 
election to a superintendency or supervising principalship. 

For the high office of superintendent (and it is high, 
despite the fact that it is always so badly paid) the selec- 
tion is to be made by a body of laymen. To them, gener- 
ally, the college or normal school diploma, irrespective 
of the institution that issued it, is a matter of form indi- 
cating qualifications neither comprehended nor appreciated. 

322 



GETTING THE OFFICE 323 

The candidate will understand that the chairman of the 
instruction committee, unless by some accident he happens 
to be a college graduate, probably knows no other language 
than English, and no other history than that of the United 
States, and no science of any kind. The candidate and 
the man with the vote are living in two different worlds. 
How shall the applicant reach over into the business world 
and persuade the business man that he is the person to be 
selected out of all the number of candidates ? When the 
season of the year is spring or summer, the candidate 
knows that he has scores, perhaps hundreds, of competi- 
tors for the position. 

At the present time, in the United States, for a man of 
twenty-four or twenty-five years of age, in charge of a 
single school, $7$^ is an average salary the country 
through, while for the one who is to superintend half a 
dozen schools $iSOO is a fair salary. At the present time, 
for any educational position paying from $yso to $iSoo, 
at the season of educational moving, there are invariably 
hundreds of applicants. It is a curious and instructive 
fact that for the $3000 superintendencies usually not 
over a score will present themselves. But cases have 
been known where three hundred applications have been 
filed for positions paying ^1000. This does not mean 
that there are thousands of teachers out of work, but it 
does mean that practically every teacher is always ready 
to move into a position paying a little higher salary than 
that already received. The result is that the laymen get 
the impression that the salary which they have to offer is 
very high, and they desire to get the very best teacher to 
be secured for the money. How are the laymen to recog- 
nize this very best man ? 

We must leave out all those communities which do not 



324 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

desire for their vacant superintendency the best available 
man, but have some particular qualification for which they 
are looking, such, for example, as being a member of a 
certain church or secret society; and we must consider 
only the position for which the competition is bona fide on 
its educational and personal merits. Let us deal with the 
matter in a simple, possibly a gossipy, manner. 

The applicant, being from twenty-five to thirty years of 
age, is probably poor. Even in the so-called high salaried 
superintendencies, there are few men who own their own 
houses, or who have incomes apart from their salaries. 
To the applicant, even the railroad fare necessary for the 
personal interview is a matter of importance. He has 
heard of the place through a teachers' agent, or through 
the president or a professor of his college or through the 
principal or an instructor of his normal school. What 
course shall he pursue in order to win success } 

There are three ways in which a candidate may influ- 
ence the decision of the board of education. The first is 
by the quality of his correspondence. The second is by 
the quality of his conversation, which is even more im- 
portant than his personal appearance. The third is by 
the quality of the references and of the direct testimonials 
that he can furnish to the board. 

The man who hopes to get the position will probably pursue a plan 
somewhat as follows : He will immediately write to the proper authority, 
stating simply, but tactfully, why he is a candidate, and what his quali- 
fications are. In this preliminary letter he will give most, or all, of the 
following facts : — 

1. His last educational preparation, whether school or college. 

2. His present or last educational experience in teaching. 

3. His age. 

4. Whether married or not. 



GETTING THE OFFICE 325 

5. When married, number of his children.^ 

6. Height and weight. 

7. His reasons for wishing to leave his present position and for 
preferring the position for which he is an applicant. 

8. A list of his references. 

9. A request for an interview. 

10. Inclosure of two or three testimonials. 

Notwithstanding the fact that laymen are to decide the question of 
his relative competency, the candidate will appreciate the fact that his 
literary style, his grammatical correctness, and his handwriting, to- 
gether with the paper and ink used, will greatly influence both the 
preliminary consideration and the final decision. The ignorant man is 
usually more impressed by a fine letter handsomely written than is the 
learned man. 

The next question that comes up is whether to write to more than 
one board member. There can certainly be no harm done by direct 
communication with three board members ; namely, the chairman of 
the instruction committee, the clerk of the board, and the president 
of the board. No reasonable objection can be made to the candidate's 
writing a letter to every board member. It is true that this shows 
eagerness to secure the position, but as a general proposition, employers 
look with favor upon such enterprise, regarding it as a compliment to 
themselves. All letters, except those to the clerk of the board and to 
the chairman of the instruction committee, should be brief. 

The third question that arises is whether or not to send a photograph. 
When a good photograph can be secured (some good-looking men take 
very poor photographs), it is usually desirable to send this picture to 
the chairman of the instruction committee or to the school visitor. 

The fourth question is whether or not to wait for a reply before 
writing again, or before going to the community to make personal 
application. As a general rule, the candidate who waits for an invita- 
tion for an interview will be disappointed, for he is not likely to get it. 
Having written asking an interview, as stated above, let him go and see 
the person addressed before receiving permission to call. The public 
office itself imposes upon the holder of it the obligation to receive 
all callers upon the business of that office, and by his interview, the 

* In a competition for a superintendency, married men with children have a distinct 
advantage, except in a few poor or parsimonious communities that realize that the salary 
is too small to support a wife and children decently. 



326 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

candidate will at least have learned something of his chance of appoint- 
ment and of the desirability of the position. 

The next question that arises is whether or not to have friends 
write. When a man relies upon his friends to write letters to board 
members, he is likely to meet two disappointments. 

A candidate who was desirous of getting a position in a certain com- 
munity found that, though all of his friends promised to write for him, 
none of them did so, because they regarded the position as undesirable. 
In another case, the applicant who had had a score of fine letters written 
for him, by prominent educators, found that the recipient had read 
them, and was ready to express his interest in them, but to avoid the 
accumulation of such documents, had thrown them into the waste- 
basket. This gentleman expressed confidence in his own memory, and 
said that he would tell his fellow-members all about the contents of the 
letters. It is a curious fact that in this case, though the letters were 
thrown away, the applicant was selected. Where a reasonable chance 
for election exists, letters are undoubtedly of value. 

The candidate now has his case before the board, has gone to the 
community, and has interviewed various members. Shall he see them 
all ? As a general proposition, unless the board is very large, the man 
who sees all the board members will not only acquire much valuable 
experience, but will be in the way to secure the election. Not infre- 
quently it happens that several members, ignored by most of the candi- 
dates, but visited by one, will band together and elect the man who paid 
them the compliment of calling on them. At any rate, the course will 
seldom injure the candidacy. 

Sometimes, the applicant who has made a very favorable 
impression by his correspondence, references, and his per- 
sonal conversation, fails to secure the election because of 
its postponement until a time when some other and later 
candidate has come into prominence. The question, there- 
fore, arises as to whether the applicant shall leave the 
matter upon a first presentation of his case. Let no man 
suppose that he is to be elected or defeated until the 
votes are counted and the majority has been recorded. In 
other words, the man who has written letters to every 
board member, and sent references or testimonials to the 



GETTING THE OFFICE 327 

chairman of the instruction committee, should keep follow- 
ing the matter up until the election has been decided. 
This means that he should continue to write letters, or to 
make calls, short, pleasant, and judicious. 

Another question that arises is whether or not he shall 
endeavor to bring any pressure upon the board, through 
his friends, or through citizens who may happen to know 
him. When the candidate knows or can reach prominent 
and influential citizens, it is wise for him to do so. A 
word from a neighbor often counts more with a board 
member than a hundred of good professional letters. At 
the same time, in all ordinary cases, the educational refer- 
ences must be good, else the pressure from citizens will 
be taken as an offense. 

Except in unusual circumstances, it is very undesirable to allude to 
any membership in any of the great secret societies, or in the organi- 
zation of any of the great political parties. The board members are 
looking for an educator, not a fraternizer. The matter of church rela- 
tionship is somewhat different. The board is not looking for a Sunday- 
school superintendent or teacher, but few communities are likely to elect 
a man who is not identified with some one of the many denominations 
of Christianity. 

The question sometimes arises in the applicant's mind as to whether 
the influence of book agents is helpful or harmful. The agents of the 
larger book houses are intelligent men, and many of them are perfectly 
honest and frank in their opinions of the qualifications of various can- 
didates. The remarks of a book agent, when evidently not biased by 
the hope of future sales, are likely to be helpful. 

A little different is the case of the man who has already 
had experience in an independent principalship or superin- 
tendency, and who desires a change for the sake of better- 
ing his condition. Commonly, the motive of men who 
desire change is economic. They feel the need of more 
money. How shall the man who is already in a school 



328 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

position get a better position ? There are only two ways 
of securing it. The one is by direct work, the other by 
obtaining the assistance of a teachers' agent. It is the 
business of the agent to know all the vacancies in school 
positions. Indeed, agents generally know about pro- 
posed changes, not all of which materialize. The man 
who has a position and desires a better one is confronted 
by three possible courses of action in respect to the posi- 
tion actually held. He may work for the new position 
quietly without informing his board, or he may speak con- 
fidentially with one or two members, or else he may resign, 
that he may work openly. When he works quietly, without 
informing any members of his board, he is likely to give 
great offense. Indeed, he may be discharged out of hand. 
When he first resigns, he is in the position of a man without 
assurance of work. This affects his own peace of mind, 
and may weaken his candidacy for another position. How- 
ever, the man who has crossed the Rubicon, and has noti- 
fied his school authorities that he is going to leave, in a 
certain sense, has the energy of despair and the boldness of 
necessity. Also, he can apply for several different positions 
without danger of giving any personal offense to his board. 
Finally, he can ask his friends in the community to help 
him to get another position. As a general principle, the 
man who has served long enough in a community to know 
that he does not care to stay longer does well definitely to 
publish the fact of his intended departure. This is the 
course of the man of courage and self-reliance, and one 
that may be pursued without loss of self-respect and with- 
out any personal misunderstanding. Such a man, in seek- 
ing a position elsewhere, may take with him letters of 
commendation from present or former board members, 
and also usually he can secure a resolution passed by 



GETTING THE OFFICE 329 

the board approving his work, at least in part. He can 
take with him also copies of such reports as he may have 
delivered to the board, samples of school work, courses 
of study, and such other school data as in his judgment 
will probably influence favorably school authorities else- 
where. Moreover, he can invite such authorities to visit 
his school or schools and thereby assure themselves of 
the quality of his work. 

The third case is that of a man who has made a failure in 
his work and has been discharged, but desires to secure 
another school position. He has a heavy uphill road to 
travel, and he may never again be able to secure such a 
position. However, when his failure is due largely to 
causes inherent in the community itself, so that his fail- 
ure redounds rather to his credit than to his discredit, he 
usually can secure as good a position as before and some- 
times a better position. At any rate, he can put forward 
the fact that he is older than he was, which carries with it 
the presumption of increased wisdom. The question arises 
as to how much he may discourse on the causes of his 
failure. With regard to this matter, it may, indeed, be 
said that the safe course is to say as little as possible. 

The man who has made a failure of one position often 
can cure the past by taking a post graduate course of 
professional study, alleging thereafter a great improve- 
ment in knowledge as the result of that study. He may 
profitably analyze his own character and ability, and deter- 
mine whether he is really competent to serve as an execu- 
tive. There are many men earning j^iooo as independent 
principals in the country districts, who are well worth 
$1500 or ;?2000 as subordinate principals or as assistant 
high school teachers in the cities. Some men of character 
are ill adapted to sustain responsibility, but admirably 



330 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

adapted to assist others in bearing their burdens. That 
is, they are good advisers but poor directors. 

To young men just entering upon the work of the school 
superintendency, successful educators are very likely to 
give the following advice : Work regularly, but always a 
little less than your strength permits. Do not expect any 
town or city to be grateful for the work you have done in 
the building up of the schools. On the contrary, that 
very work may some day lead to your undoing, for a 
reform party may have no use for the services of a pro- 
gressive man. 

To illustrate : At the end of ten years of very successful service in a 
certain city, a school superintendent had but one board member left 
who had served upon the board that had elected him. This man 
had supported the cause of progress, but at the end of the tenth year 
inaugurated a movement to force his resignation. The fact that the 
movement was unsuccessful simply shows that the school superintend- 
ent does better to rely upon the good sense of a community upon 
any present occasion that may arise than upon any gratitude for work 
done in the past. Upon the tie vote in this particular case, the chair- 
man of the board voted for the incumbent, saying : " I do not like the 
man, for he is too progressive ; but I prefer not to face the parents. 
They seem to indorse him." 

Keep your health, therefore. You will need to look 
strong and to be strong when you come to apply for your 
next position. It is a very brilliant invalid who can get 
school positions. The mind and the conscience of the 
educator always devise more work for him than he can do 
in justice to his health. This is as true of him as it is of the 
physician in successful practice. The opportunities of each 
to render valuable service to their fellow-men are unlimited. 

Another condition arises in respect to getting the 
office of administrator or supervisor when the man is suc- 
cessful and is called up higher. This call may be not 



GETTING THE OFFICE 33 1 

definite but informal. It may be an intimation that if 
he desires the position and becomes a candidate for it, he 
may have it. When a school superintendent or princi- 
pal has acquired sufficient reputation to be in demand, he 
must exercise the greatest judgment not to leave a posi- 
tion in which he is successful to take one in which he will 
be a failure. The call " to come up higher " must be care- 
fully considered before being accepted. It may come 
from school communities in several different circumstances. 
The vacancy to be filled may have been created by the 
death of a successful occupant. In such a case, the posi- 
tion is probably desirable, for the schools are likely to be 
in good condition, and the town will be anxious to keep 
them so. In the second place, the vacancy may have been 
created by the call of the former incumbent to go elsewhere 
to a better position. In such a case, the position may be 
desirable, and it may not. 

To illustrate: A superintendent receiving $2000 a year may be 
called to another position worth $2500. The fact that the community 
in which he is successful is willing to allow the matter of $500 to stand 
in the way of keeping the man is a point decidedly against the com- 
munity itself. On the other hand, the community may be willing to 
raise the successful candidate's salary, and he may be unwilling, for 
personal reasons, to continue in the place. In the latter case, the 
position is probably desirable. 

But a third case arises, in which the vacancy has been 
created by the voluntary departure of the superintendent 
or principal because the educational conditions of the 
community were intolerable. Under either of these cir- 
cumstances, the actual conditions of the community require 
the most thorough investigation before a man successful 
in one position should resign to accept the call. 

Another case arises, in which the community has 



332 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

discharged the former incumbent because he was a failure. 
In this case, the newcomer will probably find the schools 
in a wretched condition, and will have a heavy labor before 
him. As a general proposition, a man successful in a 
given position does well to stay in it. But upon the suppo- 
sition that he is willing to listen to the intimation that he 
can have the position if he is willing to apply for it, what 
shall he do in order positively to secure the appointment .? 
Evidently, he must not be too eager, for such eagerness 
will be misinterpreted. All he can do is to file his papers 
and suggest an invitation to meet at least the leading 
board members in a conference. At this conference, it 
is probably well to state, in general terms, one's edu- 
cational faith, so that the position, if secured, shall be 
based upon terms of mutual understanding. It is easier 
to make a good bargain before employment than after. 
Hence, it is well to suggest that, if successful at the end 
of the first year, one would like to have a three- or five- 
year appointment, or else an election^ upon an indefinite 
tenure. This is the time, moreover, to discuss the ques- 
tion of the salary to be paid if successful. It is not 
desirable to go into the minutiae of educational theories. 
However, one who believes in the principles of the new 
education may profitably suggest his faith in these new 
practices, so that later he may refer to his remarks as 
a preliminary notification of his purposes.^ 

* Only the very successful man in a good position can dictate an immediate appointment 
during good behavior, and only a first-class board offering a first-class position will appoint 
indefinitely or for a term of years. 

2 A man who was a great believer in manual training at the time of his election stated to 
the board that he was an enthusiast in regard to manual training, though he was prepared to 
temper his enthusiasm with common sense. Four years later, upon his first opportunity, he 
referred to this conversation, addressing his remarks to a board that was composed of almost 
entirely different members from the board that elected him, saying that, when he was elected, 
he had told the board that he was a manual training enthusiast. The cooperation of this new 
board was readily secured. 



GETTING THE OFFICE 333 

A number of illustrations may assist us to a clearer understanding of 
the conditions of candidatures for positions, and of the circumstances 
into which at times candidates are forced. 

By invitation from a school board that controlled a $1200 position, 
a candidate met the members in a hallway outside of a lodge. Nine 
men of ordinary appearance were assembled, of whom five were 
chewing tobacco, one was smoking, and one was both smoking and 
chewing. The candidate was told to state his qualifications. When 
he had completed his statement, he was asked for a chew of tobacco 
by one of the board members. The candidate replied that he neither 
chewed nor smoked. This surprising announcement was followed by 
an immediate proposition from the chairman of this singular gathering 
to elect him then and there as a fit model for the boys of the schools to 
follow. This candidate was elected promptly and served happily in the 
community for several years. The candidate might have declined to 
join their tobacco festivities in so disagreeable a manner as to have 
offended these men, but he had answered tactfully but firmly. It ap- 
peared later that all the previous candidates were users of tobacco. 

A second illustration: A candidate was told by a member of the 
board of education that it was not worth while to visit certain working- 
men who were in the minority. The candidate found one of these 
workingmen at home in a modest tenement. There they conversed 
for two hours. This workingman proved to be a natural leader. There 
was a deadlock at the board meeting that night between two of the 
strongest candidates, and at the critical moment the workingman put 
forward the name of the only candidate who had visited him, and 
secured his election. 

A further illustration is the case of a candidate who was told that he 
could be elected provided he was prepared to accept things as they 
were, and in particular to keep quiet about a contract for plumbing 
that the chairman of the building committee had made with himself 
as a master plumber. Most of the candidates successively declined to 
keep this condition. The final result was that this particular corrup- 
tionist was forced to resign from the board. However, the unfortunate 
man who was successful in securing the election found that three 
years later the corruption had returned in a more insidious form than 
before. 

As an offset to the foregoing illustration, we may consider that of the 
scholarly and able executive who had a perfect system of records, and 



334 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

whose school reports were models, but who by his papers gave an erro- 
neous impression that he spent all his time in the office. The truth 
was, that he averaged at least four hours a day in actual class room 
supervision, despite the fact that he was in charge of a considerable 
system of schools. When several years later the same superintendency 
was again vacant, this candidate was then elected at a salary a thou- 
sand dollars higher than the position had ever paid before. 

A fifth illustration is that of the candidate among some hundreds 
of others, who secured the election solely because he wrote one brief 
letter a day to at least one board member until the final casting of the 
ballots. He thought that "out of sight" is "out of mind," and to 
remedy this difficulty kept himself before the board by his letter- 
writing. 

An unhappy illustration of the conditions that may be imposed upon 
candidates before a board is that wherein an informal tender of a posi- 
tion was made by the instruction committee, whereupon the president 
of the board interposed three conditions. Of these, the first was that 
the incoming superintendent should ignore the overcrowded condition 
of the schools. Second, that he should ignore the diversion of a por- 
tion of the funds for the use of a school nominally public but really 
denominational. Third, that he should agree never to interfere in the 
nomination or election of board members. The successful candidate was 
the first of the many candidates whom the board could trust implicitly 
to carry out these orders of the political " bosses " of the community. 

Another unfortunate condition was presented in a community in 
which the applicant was forced to agree to contribute a certain amount 
of money annually to the funds of two great political parties. This was 
done, they said, to insure nonpartisanship. One applicant asked where 
he was to get the money for this purpose, and was told that he could 
either save it out of his salary, or arrange to secure it from certain 
school contracts. 

Men are defeated for some school positions for reasons 
that would secure their success in other candidacies. In 
general, the larger the community, the more probable its 
requirement that the school superintendent shall be of 
vigorous personality. In fact, the very qualities of aggres- 
siveness and personal power that often lead to failure in 



GETTING THE OFFICE 335 

smaller communities make certain the greatest success in 
large communities. This illustrates the truth that some- 
times it is easier to succeed in great things than in small. 

One who deals with the question of getting the office 
of superintendent cannot ignore the inevitable discussion 
about the ** dead line of fifty." Is there a chance in Amer^ 
ican education for the man of fifty years of age, who for 
any reason is out of a position and anxious to get another ? 
It may safely be said that there is no chance for such a 
man unless he is willing to pursue post graduate studies, 
or unless he possesses such marked ability and energy as 
to be a formidable candidate for large school principal- 
ships and school system superintendencies. The man of 
fifty years of age should not be out of a position, but 
should be in demand. In view of the present conditions 
in regard to salary, it has probably been impossible for 
such a man to save up enough money to retire, and in all 
frankness one is compelled to say that the man of fifty 
who is in good health but who for some reason is looking 
for a position in education is in a worse plight than even 
the superannuated teacher who must apply for a pension. 

The course of action that may best be taken by a board 
of education, when a new superintendent is required, may 
be inferred from the preceding discussion. Yet certain 
additional points suggest themselves. In general, it may 
be said that while school boards spend enough time in 
selecting the superintendent, they are seldom sufficiently 
systematic in their procedure to render probable the selec- 
tion of the best man who is available. A superintendent 
about to retire from a position may properly advise 
following a course somewhat as outlined below. It usu- 
ally assists in the early elimination of the essentially 
undesirable candidates, and in the centering upon only 



336 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

the most desirable. A course well deliberated upon may 
save the mistake of electing emotionally upon first impres- 
sions, and the trouble of repenting soon afterwards. This 
course may be as follows, namely : — 

1. Determination of the salary to be paid the first year, 
and the probable increase, if any, thereafter. 

2. The appointment of a special committee of two or 
three to consider all applications, to correspond with persons 
named as references, and to give candidates who appear in 
person the opportunity of reasonably long interviews. 

3. A clear definition of the essential qualities of the man 
to be chosen. 

a. Education, — college, normal school, post graduate. 

b. Age. 

c. Married or not. 

d. Experience, — teaching, executive, supervisory. 
In addition, the policy should be determined, 

4. Whether or not to request teachers' bureaus to sug- 
gest candidates, with or without indorsement. 

5. Whether or not to ask in the selection the advice 
of the retiring superintendent. 

6. Whether or not to visit the schools of the most prom- 
ising candidates. 

The questions as to how many persons should be placed 
upon the subcommittee to nominate the superintendent, 
whether to place upon it only the representatives of the 
majority party upon the board (if any), whether or not to 
elect the nominee at all, and whether to elect him only 
after his appearance before the full board for interview, 
must all depend upon local conditions. A board of men of 
character, intelligence, and business capacity, and working 
in reasonable harmony, will seldom appoint a nominating 
committee whose nominee will require to be too curiously 



GETTING THE OFFICE 337 

cross-examined in public. The less disagreeable the pro- 
cess of selection, the more easily may the new incumbent 
adjust himself pleasantly and strongly in the position. 
The memory of a hard contest for election does not con- 
duce to the earliest efficiency of the superintendent in a 
new position. 

For the reputation of the community, board members at interviews 
should refrain from discussing other candidates, the faults of the re- 
tiring superintendent, and the probabilities of their own vote, or of the 
decision of the board. While members not upon the special committee 
should receive calls of candidates and of invited nominees (when two or 
three are named), they need not feel obligated to grant long interviews. 
Save in small communities without good hotels, no candidates should 
ever be invited to lodge with a board member during the canvass. In- 
vitations to meals are distinctly out of order. The whole matter must 
be dealt with impersonally, though politely. 

The time when a new school superintendent is to be 
elected is the very best time for a board to determine 
whether or not it desires to have its schools conducted 
professionally. The so-called system (the Greek avaTrj^a 
means standing together) of education (which is really an 
accumulation of embarrassments) may now be summarized 
by analogy. Imagine the care of the health of a community 
turned over to a board of health, all of whose members 
are laymen. Let this board decide upon a uniform 
course of diet, of drugs, and of surgical measures for any 
and all conditions of health, disease, and wounds. Let it 
employ a physician-in-chief with other physicians and sur- 
geons and a body of trained nurses. Let the people of 
the community vote to this board of health no reward 
for their own services as managers, and the smallest 
amount upon which it is possible to secure a sufficient 
number of persons to go decently through the forms of 
caring for the health of everybody. Let them denounce 



338 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

as extravagant, all requests for more medical and surgical 
facilities, for a broader range in the pharmacopoeia, and for 
higher salaries. Let the board decide whether or not the 
services of the various physicians and surgeons and nurses 
are competent. And let the people call the chief physician 
incompetent when the subordinate physicians or the nurses 
lose a case. Were such a condition ever to be realized, 
would not the board of health abdicate its powers as far 
as possible by delegating them to the chief physician.? 
Would not the medical superintendent and his corps of 
workers be justified in asking for more power by reso- 
lutions of the lay board than are given by statute laws ? 

Is the analogy too remote ? What is education but the 
care of the health and disease and wounds of the growing 
mind ? And is not the mind more than the body ? And 
does not education really concern even the body ? 

The barrier to the success of laymen as members of 
ruling boards of health and of education is ignorance of 
the fundamental biologic law of civilization, — the law that 
is in the alphabet of the great professions.^ Advancing 
civilization (after all good land has been taken up) re- 
quires a lowering of the death rate as far as possible and 
of the birth rate to the point commensurate with the prog- 
ress of discovery and of invention favorable to the welfare 
of life (the point of "diminishing returns," the principle 
being carried beyond land to science and industry); an 
improving of the quality of the children born by retar- 
dation of marriage to the period of the highest physical 
vitality of the parents (Nature has provided against births 
too late in the life of the mother and rewards youthful 
chastity by accumulating vital reserves) ; a lengthening of 

^ The barrier is not insurmountable, but the instances of its being surmounted are still 
uncommon. The law can be summarized only with difficulty, for, like life itself, it is complex. 



GETTING THE OFFICE 339 

the period of infancy; the strengthening of the adult so 
that physical vigor is maintained into old age (death being 
by collapse rather than by the expiration of senility); the 
preservation of the Family (which is the essential and the 
only absolutely essential institution of civilization); and 
an enriching of the environment of childhood and youth, — 
to these ends : that parents may have intelligence, time, 
and means to develop their offspring, that well-born and 
well-educated men and women may live out their lives to 
the full measure of their potency of service, that the wastes 
of sickness and death may diminish by the cessation of 
unfit births and the disappearance of partially educated 
youths. The small family, when still large enough to be 
a family and to offset the death rate, tends to give the 
nation hope by giving its children culture, while the large 
family tends to bring the nation to despair by inducing 
poverty. A nation with very small families and with 
many bachelors and maids tends to indolence and decline. 
The converse of this law completes it. Culture tends to 
the education of children^ by teaching love of them for 
their own sake after birth, and therefore tends to small 
families, thereby protecting civilization. It is unneces- 
sary to point out here, in how many ways the School 
works for the law of progressive civilization. Business 
works against the law, for competition by reducing the 
wages of the mass, though raising those of the select 
few who can rent their ability (as very desirable land is 
rented), and by increasing the rents to be paid for land for 
homes forces into the background the interests of children 

* In normal schools, I have found an instructive illustration of this truth. A singularly 
large proportion of all girls in such schools are either from families of but one or two children 
or the youngest members of large families. In general, the parents of all normal school pupils 
are of very limited means. A normal school education is the briefest good higher education 
open to the children of the poor. 



340 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

and youth,^ which are the only important interests of 
humanity conceived as a race. Thus, competition lowers 
the general tone of society. The cry of business is for 
" cheap help " and for " low prices," both perilous to human 
welfare, both conducive to poverty.^ A board of laymen 
who are only that, who comprehend modern business and 
have entered into its spirit (or have been conquered by it), 
and who think that business comprehends life (not knowing 
that in all history the subordination of a people to business 
has invariably sealed its doom), actually imperils civiliza- 
tion in the degree of its power, to influence general affairs. 

That board is truly professional in spirit which, in obedience to the 
necessity of advancing civilization, empowers professional men (those 
who have differentiated themselves from the mass and have properly 
prepared themselves for special functions in the cause of culture) to 
carry on their peculiar duties in society, and which concerns itself with 
the tasks of getting funds ^ and of cooperating with the professional men 
in their wise expenditure. 

1 The School teaches love of Nature, which is not innate. The bicycle and trolley are 
permitting the educated and the well-to-do to live in the suburbs of the great cities and the 
ignorant and poor to go out into the suburbs to work while they live in the city. The ambi- 
tion of the poor mother is to live near grocery and provision market and department store (so 
as to leave untended her little ones at home for the briefest possible time) and to have no yard 
or garden to care for. She has neither time nor strength voluntarily to be more than a nurse 
for her children and a cook and laundress for her husband. The ambition of the poor father 
is to be as near his friends as possible, for society, not solitude, is the refuge, the asylum, of 
the poor and ignorant. Now the School remedies this (working forever for the law) by 
teaching love of Nature and creating a demand for space and air. Those who imagine that 
the electric railroad is taking every one into the country should study the statistics of the 
cities and visit the suburban factories and railroads at 6.45 a.m. Like every other purely 
economic improvement, rapid transit into the country works against the unsuccessful poor, 
that is, the majority of people, by allowing suburban factory help to live in the city. 

2 See definition, page 356, note i. 

s If boards of education should spend half their time in work to get funds, they would do 
better for education than they now do. They prefer the easier labor of trying to reduce 
expenditures after others have given them what money they chose. To increase the income 
is the work of men, to reduce the outgo, that of women, as the American household shows. 
Some men (unfortunately inheriting in civilization feminine minds) spend fi)je dollars' worth 
of time to save a dollar of money. It is symptomatic of incompetence for a board to worry 
and to wrangle over petty sums rather than to go out and raise sufficient means to carry on 
public education creditably. The work of educating public sentiment to reasonable school 
appropriations should be carried on all through the year by boards of education. 



CHAPTER XVI 
SALARY, TENURE, AND CERTIFICATE 

To know the cause, gives direction to the finding of the 
remedies. Salaries in education are rising and will con- 
tinue to rise. They have risen even during years of busi- 
ness depression. Why they are now what they are after 
many years of prosperity can be stated briefly in the terms 
of economic science. 

In contradistinction from nearly all other workers, 
teachers are paid by others than those for whom they 
work. Most teachers work for children ; ^ but all are paid 
by adults, who, though board members, often do not even 
know the names of their employees. The effect of this is 
necessarily to cause undervaluation of the ability, energy, 
and effort of the teachers. The remedy is for teachers to 
circulate among the people of their communities, and to 
become as well known out of school as are the business 
people, and the men in other professions, such as medi- 
cine, law, and the ministry. 

The public school teacher is the product of two impor- 
tant contributing sources. From the side of the Church, 

* Despite the fact that the law has always recognized the total incapacity of children to 
see, to remember, and to express the truth, the testimony of children regarding teachers 
continues to be taken. Such testimony is almost worthless. Were this a book upon school 
management, I should multiply the instances. Whether favorable or unfavorable to the 
teacher, whether upon a special fact or a general matter, the testimony of one pupil or of 
several, is never to be taken. This is true even of high school pupils. It is difficult for even 
well-educated men to know and to remember the truth of a conversation or of an event. For 
the psychological cause of the impossibility for children to see the facts or to hear the truth 
of the world of adults, see Hall, " Adolescence, its Psychology," page lo. Read also such 
stories as "A Boy's Town," by Hovvells. 



342 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

the teacher may be called the offshoot from the clergy, 
who in former times offered instruction to the young as 
the chief of their duties.^ From the side of the Family, 
the teacher is an offshoot from the governess and the 
tutor. These elements contribute dignity, intimacy, con- 
fidence, aristocracy, but not financial ease, to the modern 
teacher's position. 

The early universality of teachers made them common, 
and caused their product to be considered cheap. The 
remedy for this is increasing the professional qualifica- 
tions, so that difficulty may bar the doorways into teach- 
ing and attest the skill of the teacher. 

In the last half-century, the intellectual progress of the 
world has been extraordinary. Those who understand this 
are the educated, who are limited in number. Many of the 
subjects now taught in our elementary schools and most of 
those now taught in our high schools are unknown to most 
parents, citizens, and board members. The result is that 
the scholarship of the teacher is underrated because the 
value of his or her instruction is unknown to that present 
generation which holds the purse strings of America. The 
remedy for this is in getting the adults of the community 
interested, through the children, in the work of the schools. 
Many parents do not visit schools solely because they do 
not like to be made to feel their ignorance. 

1 Nothing more clearly indicates the decadence of the Church than that in Protestant 
circles it now relegates the instruction of the young to an hour upon Sunday for the benefit 
of those who come, totally neglecting those who do not care to come. This course is nothing 
more or less than neglecting its very life blood. The Church has ceased indeed to be a uni- 
versal institution, and needs itself to be redeemed. " Preach the Gospel to every creature " 
means being the keeper of the children of the neighborhood. Every child of right is born into 
the Church as well as into the State, the School, and the Family. Moreover, of right he is 
bom to land for a home and to work for a living. 

Historically, it is more correct to say that the ancient priesthood was differentiated into 
preachers (prophets) and teachers. There is no more interesting inquiry in all the field of 
sociology than that into the causes of the survival of the pastor who is a faint reflection 
of the ancient priest in the modern American age. 



SALARY, TENURE, AND CERTIFICATE 343 

The resistance to the movement for increased salaries 
seems to come chiefly from three classes of persons : the 
heavy taxpayers, especially those who have no children in 
the public schools; the ignorant poor who are just intel- 
ligent enough to be envious of the teacher's easily earned 
money (so it seems to them) ; and the teachers who fear 
that when salaries are raised, together with increased re- 
quirements, they will find their own services no longer suffi- 
ciently valuable for their continuation in educational work. 

With the objection of some of the childless taxpayers and 
of most of the " soulless corporations," we need have little 
sympathy. On the contrary, we may feel that the present 
tax system is essentially imperfect if not actually unj ust.^ 

The ignorant poor are the very ones for whose children 

the teacher can do relatively the most. For such adults, 

there should be evening schools and free lecture courses. 

They need the light against which they war. 

At a council meeting, a man on $15 a week argued against good 
salaries for teachers. The millionaire board of education chairman 
replied very admirably, " What I want this money to increase teachers' 
salaries for, is to help your children when grown up to be worth to 
themselves and the world far more than you are, or than I am." The 
workingman replied that the well-educated children of the well-to-do 
crowded out the children of the poor, who must leave school early. To 
this the chairman answered, " So much the more is it necessary to have 
the best possible teachers in the primary schools." 

We may, however, sympathize with the teachers who 
feel that increased salaries will result in their discharge. 

1 See Appendix XI for a statement of my own opinion regarding a just taxation system. 
Unquestionably, our people generally do not understand the facts as to the actual wealth of 
our country at the present time. It seems to be commonly known that we increased in wealth 
faster than in population during the fourteen years from 1890 to 1904, but the fact that in 1902 
we were considered to be worth at least ninety-five billions is not generally understood, and 
that our business in that year was ninety-five billions is often doubted. However, the rational 
man can understand that only so great a business as that could possibly admit the saving 
of billions annually and therefore the increase in wealth, which is admitted by all. See also 
Appendix II. 



344 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Any legislation, of course, should arrange for the con- 
tinuance in service of those who are already engaged 
professionally in the work. New requirements should apply 
only to beginners and to those who desire higher positions. 

The salaries of the teachers are fixed by the represen- 
tatives of the people, who are generally masterful men of 
ability, either as politicians or as employers or in the 
independent professions. Almost always they are men. 
Most teachers are women. Men never yet have properly 
valued the work of women, nor women the work of men. 
Some teachers are men. Many principals are men. Most 
superintendents are men. It is a conspicuous fact that the 
men in teaching receive higher salaries than the women. 
Unfortunately, the result is that the women persistently 
criticise unfavorably the men's salaries, and thus tend to 
keep them down. When once it has fairly dawned upon the 
minds of all the teachers of this country that every salary- 
increase to any man or woman in the profession tends to 
increase one's own salary, the compensations of the men 
and women will rise together even more rapidly than they 
are rising now. It is beyond question that disaffection be- 
tween supervised and supervisors tends to keep down the 
salaries of all. Teachers make one another's reputations. 
The remedy is for all to unite, teachers and principals alike ; 
and as such a united body to deal with their employers 
upon the fair grounds of justifiable self-respect and of 
professional unity. A true profession sets its own fees. 

Professional courtesy certainly does not require that a 
thoroughly good teacher shall speak favorably of one who 
is hopelessly bad. On the contrary, one's duty to the pro- 
fession and to the cause of education requires that the 
incompetent and the immoral shall be read out of the 
profession by the competent and the good in it. There 



SALARY, TENURE, AND CERTIFICATE 345 

ought to be some provision in education equivalent to 
that in the legal profession by which a corrupt member 
is disbarred. 

The minimum salaries of teachers are determined in 
part by direct legislation and in part by the individual and 
professional standards of living. By natural economic 
principles, teachers will not teach for less than they are 
willing to live upon. Boards cannot secure teachers for 
lower salaries than those which afford these standards of 
living. When political law is added, the supply of teachers 
is restricted, and the minimum salaries are afforded by 
those candidates' standards of living who can get certificates 
to teach. This political law is society's self-defense, in 
the interest of the young who will be the society and the 
race of the future, against the strong in the community 
who look solely to present advantage to themselves and to 
lowest costs. 

The maximum salaries are afforded by the wealth and 
the ambition of communities that, though they understand 
that human life can be supported on less than so many 
hundred dollars per annum, are not willing to pay miser- 
able pittances. They deny that those who train their chil- 
dren should live on the least for which they can be 
secured. These communities understand that it does not 
do to get a thoroughbred race horse and to expect him to win 
races on a hay diet. They propose to give their teachers 
the most that they can afford to pay. 

It is true that a high school staff can be made up easily of young 
college graduates glad to take $500, and that the market is flooded with 
trained kindergartners eager to get $400. But in no city of ten 
thousand people in America is it wise or honorable to ask teachers to 
live upon such small amounts of money. 

To secure the maximum salaries, teachers must be very 



346 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

conscientious in maintaining and in advancing their pro- 
fessional qualifications and must be ambitious to increase 
their professional reputations. Positive intrinsic worth 
and activity in professional lines, especially in associations, 
when combined, touch the pride of communities, and sal- 
aries respond by rising. This brings us to the economic 
principle that affects salary as reward for past success. 
It is conspicuously true of salaried workers that they are 
paid not so much for what they are as for what they have 
accomplished. To be more exact, they are paid in propor- 
tion with opinion ; and opinion, being formed upon known 
actions, is based upon the past achievements or failures. 

It is well recognized in economic science that the salary principle is 
unjust in that the position itself rather than the worker in the position 
determines its amount. Salary does not depend upon product as does 
wage. Salary does not vary greatly with individuals. It represents the 
community neither in prosperity nor in adversity, but in its average con- 
dition. Teachers would do well to inquire, when offered choice as to 
localities of employment, which is growing in wealth and population. 
Communities that are growing in population but not in wealth are most 
to be avoided. Every salary-receiver has a right to look forward to 
future increases. 

Certain general conditions regarding the salaries of 
teachers are noteworthy. Where the profit-taker and the 
weekly wage-earner cannot be secure at any time, the 
salaried person has a year to anticipate from the time of 
making the annual contract. This security pays its insur- 
ance rates in lower annual returns than insecurity receives. 
Their neighbors are very apt to overrate the incomes paid 
salaried men and women. A thrifty pride would prevent 
this ; for where salaries are published, though reputations 
may suffer, the pocketbooks of the deserving gain. 

It has been said that the profession has come from two 
contributing sources, the clergy and the tutor or governess. 



SALARY, TENURE, AND CERTIFICATE 347 

To discriminate clearly the teaching profession from all 
other occupations, it is desirable to discriminate profes- 
sional teaching from all other forms of teaching. We are 
very well accustomed to discriminate between the mother 
dosing her little ones, the quack with his panacea, and 
the "regular" physician; only the physician is giving 
medicine scientifically for the restoration of health. We 
recognize medicine as a profession ; so also law, theology, 
engineering, and various other occupations. It is well for 
us to separate the profession of education from all other 
forms of teaching and to recognize it as such. We know 
that in our American society are teachers of music, of fine 
arts, of trades, of devices, of commercial and mechanical 
arts, even of astrology, palmistry, and various other char- 
latanries, to say nothing of barbering, horseshoeing, mil- 
linery, dressmaking, cooking, and pharmaceutics, as well 
as teachers of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Whatever 
the grown-up folks know, they like to teach to the children. 
In some degree, all adults are teachers. And there are 
440,000 school teachers in our nation, not including the 
7300 college professors, or the 20,000 teachers of art, 
many of whom teach in schools. Just how many tutors 
and governesses there are, nobody knows. The more or 
less recognized teachers outnumber the 115,000 lawyers, 
the 112,000 ministers, and 132,000 physicians, taken to- 
gether.i But to this day, education is not a profession 
in the same sense as is either medicine, law, or theology. 
There are several causes for this condition. 

To practice medicine, the candidate must secure the 

* These figures are from the census of 1900. Scarcely half of the lawyers are practicing 
law, and many ministers and physicians are only nominally so employed, if employed at all. 
Since as yet no especial honor attaches to being known as a school teacher, few persons 
report themselves as such unless actually engaged as teachers. With these statistics, com- 
pare the 84,000 saloon keepers and 89,000 bartenders, and 117,000 policemen and detectives. 



348 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

degree from certificated practitioners. To practice law, he 
must be admitted to the bar by admitted lawyers. To 
preach theology, he must be ordained by recognized theo- 
logians. The gatekeepers to the true professions are 
selected by the accepted exponents of those professions, 
to the marked welfare of the general public. Again, 
medicine, law, and theology, each mean a more or less well- 
defined body of doctrine or core of thought. Education 
is beginning to assume similar definition. Each profession 
has its definite temporal relation. Law seeks to bring the 
present into line with the past. Medicine deals with the 
present. Teaching is in the interest of the future. 
Theology is concerned with the eternal and the infinite. 
Lastly, the human factor (in a true profession) transcends 
all material factors. Law seeks to guarantee justice and 
private rights to human beings. Theology seeks the sal- 
vation of human souls. Medicine seeks human health. 
When teaching no longer places as its goal the pupil's 
knowing so much grammar, or so much banjoing, or so 
much carpentering, or so much anything whatsoever, and 
sets as its goal the development of the human mind, then 
it becomes a profession. We may call it professional 
teaching, or school teaching, or education.^ 

These facts and principles bear noteworthy relations to 
teachers' salaries. Making the occupation of teaching a 
profession means raising the intrinsic value of teaching 
and the community's opinion of that value. The herb 
doctor receives less than the physician ; the grammarian, 
than the educator. No one hears reputable successful 

1 Teachers are apostles of the light, missionaries. Their errand is intellectual, moral, 
spiritual, not material or mercantile. They affect the agriculture, commerce, industry, of the 
decades ahead, as pilots guide ships ; but their direct labor is with souls. Therefore, ought 
members of this profession to measure themselves resolutely, not in terms of dollars, but by 
the principles of the life invisible, which, year by year, more and more controls and converts 
to its own likeness Nature and natural humanity. 



SALARY, TENURE, AND CERTIFICATE 349 

physicians talk of "the business of medicine" or reputable 
clergymen speak of ** the business of preaching." The 
increasing prevalence of the phrase "the business of law" 
is deplored by the best and most successful lawyers. 
"The business of education" is on the wane. In these 
times, the best superintendents and principals are very apt 
to ask the young college graduate whether he " means to 
make a life work of teaching." The use of teaching " as 
a stepping-stone to a profession " is ceasing, and will end 
when teaching itself is perfectly organized as a profession. 
There is no antagonism between teaching and woman's 
natural life work in a home of her own ; there is no good 
reason to ask the young woman of twenty, just graduated 
from a normal school, whether she intends to make teach- 
ing her life work. She does mean to teach all her life, 
either the children of other people or her own. But the 
invasion of young men, bent on money-getting, is a curse 
to teaching, and cultivates in them insincerity and super- 
ficiality. 

In this age, the salaries of teachers are derived from 
three sources : the private purses of individuals ; the 
interests, rents, or profits of real estate, stocks, bonds, 
and other endowment funds ; and the taxation of private 
property by public law. Less than a century has seen the 
first change from the most to the least important source, 
and the third from the least to the most important. In 
the meantime, the revenues from endowments have vastly 
increased. But all salaries of professional teachers, irre- 
spective of their sources, are non-economic in their nature ; 
they are not " compensations," though it is often hard for 
the business man to understand this and often distasteful 
for the teachers to admit it. No professional teacher*s 
service is " worth " moneyc The teacher is not " worth " 



350 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

money, but his services require money for their continu- 
ance, since they cost him money to produce them. The 
better the teacher the more his service usually has cost 
and must continue to cost him in its production. The 
institution that employs him is employing so much health, 
vigor, mind, spirit, soul; the income allotted to him 
measures the amount he is to receive for his bodily, 
mental, moral, and spiritual sustenance; and to a very 
great degree this determines the quality of service he is 
to give. To a like degree, it is folly to put a professor in 
his professorial chair on the wages of a plowboy, and to 
put a plowboy in the professorial chair on the salary of 
a professor. American education knows many instances 
of its learned scholars and teachers of well-deserved repu- 
tation living on ten or twelve hundred dollars a year and 
some few instances of its immature youths in high places on 
two thousand a year. 

The service of the teacher is not rendered in either the 
production or the distribution of material wealth. Yet the 
acquirement of commercial, industrial, mechanical, domes- 
tic, and agricultural arts, by education higher than that of 
grammar grades, is almost certain to increase a boy's or a 
girl's direct wealth-value to a community. Good literature, 
science, history, music, painting, — these inculcate love of 
more beautiful material possessions and arouse the purpose 
to acquire them. As disciples of our own logic, we are 
forced to see that our " pay " comes, not as exchange for 
property surrendered or wealth produced or for services 
in these connections, but as gifts without equivalents in 
kind. The teacher's salary is a reward or an honorarium 
or an annual income commuted in place of fees. In this 
respect, the teacher's salary stands on the same difficult 
footing with the preacher's. Some even predict that if 



SALARY, TENURE, AND CERTIFICATE 351 

medicine and law survive, they, too, will come to the same 
evolution.^ 

All the activities of the world may be classified as those of 
business or those of charity. Business is the realm of quid 
pro quo ; it includes about one fourth of the activities of 
mankind.^ Charity is the realm where " something " is con- 
stantly given or got "for nothing," where real "things" 
are exchanged for ideas, hopes, sympathies. The market 
typifies business ; the home typifies charity. The farmer 
brings in vegetables and takes home boots. The father 
gives food, clothes, shelter, and gets love, sympathy, and 
care. The balance scale is the instrument of business. 
The alchemist's refining furnace is the reality of every 
charitable institution. The hospital receives wealth for 
its healing of disease and gives back health. The school 
receives wealth for its instructing of ignorance and gives 
back intelligence. The home receives wealth to refresh 
weariness and gives back strength. All the world con- 
sumes wealth, and the final goal of all wealth is useful 
consumption? In this respect only, as recipients and con- 
sumers, do wives, mothers, children, invalids, and the aged, 
and preachers, teachers, physicians, poets, artists, and law- 
makers border upon the business world. They make 
demands upon it, very largely they create its tastes and 
fashions, but save as bakers of the bread and as makers 
of the clothes of the wealth-producers they give it nothing 



1 See page 141. The poor to-day need public lawyers to protect their rights. 

* The man who in a public meeting attacked the proposition to raise teachers' salaries 
as " confiscation of private property for the benefit of persons doing no work," threw him- 
self open to the savage reply of a popular agitator. — " They say your income is a quarter of 
a million a year. No one ever saw you do a day's work in your life." Unfortunately, there 
is in business a good deal that savors of something for nothing, and in charity a good deal 
that is singularly businesslike in its attempt to measure equivalents. 

s This was the greatest of all the great ideas of John Ruskin. The Japanese understand 
the principle better than do we of the Occident. 



352 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

that may be itself consumed in the support of life. Teach- 
ers exist by social favor, expressed publicly or privately. 
We are desired for our own sakes. We are accepted as 
proper burdens upon the productive labor of the world. 
We do not receive more wealth from industrial society 
because, from habit, tradition, reason, and choice, wealth- 
controlling mankind does not care to pay us more, and so 
have less for itself and for its other dependent favorites. 

Statistics show that the total population of this country, 
agricultural, commercial, manufacturing, and mining, di- 
rectly engaged in producing wealth, does not exceed ten 
million workers. In short, one person in four, by more 
or less constant labor with a money return, supports the 
other three. There are as many school children in this 
country as there are direct wealth producers. There are 
twenty million wives, most of whom are dependent upon 
their husbands ; there are a million and a half domestic 
servants, and three quarters of a million members of the 
four professions of law, theology, medicine, and education, 
and over half as many government employees. 

All these dependents upon the wealth-producing labor 
of our people live by the voluntary contributions or by the 
exactions from the labor of the people as gifts or returns 
for the necessaries of life, or as payment of interest, rents, 
and profits. If these contributions and exactions should 
cease, civilization would come to an abrupt and catas- 
trophic end. But the history of the world shows that the 
increase of inventions means not merely an increase in 
material comfort and luxury, but an even greater increase 
in the proportion of the out-of-business to the business 
members of society. 

The teacher's position is secure. Humanity knows that 
he radiates social companionship and peace, personal aspi- 



SALARY, TENURE, AND CERTIFICATE 353 

ration and knowledge of Nature and human nature, quali- 
ties never to be forgotten either by the ** makers of money " 
or the producers of wealth. The teacher's salary, there- 
fore, measures his community's desire for his services. We 
are apt to forget this. The average teacher's salary, 1^400 
or $600 or $800 or ;?iooo, reflects the community's average 
sense of the value of teaching to its life, and measures the 
quality of its desire to educate its young generation. Upon 
such an analysis, it seems clear that, though interesting, 
all comparisons of teachers' incomes with those of manu- 
facturers, shopkeepers, clerks, mechanics, journalists, book 
writers, bankers, civil engineers, and of all who constitute 
the world of business, are essentially barren of result. But 
a brief comparison of incomes not derived from the direct 
production of wealth may be instructive. 

In the United States, there are few cities where the 
salary of the superintendent of schools is as high as that 
of the leading preacher, or one half the income of the 
leading doctor, or one quarter that of the leading lawyer. 
The number of college presidents, school superintendents, 
and principals who receive ;?5000 or over is less than one 
hundred. But the number of clergymen who receive 
1^5000 and more is five times as great. Every well-located 
and permanently established city of ten thousand people 
has several doctors and lawyers with that income. On 
the other hand, the total amount of money expended in 
a given community on preachers seldom equals the total 
amount expended for teachers. It would probably be a 
fair estimate to say that the nation's legal advice costs it 
twice as much as its medical service and three or four 
times as much as its preaching or teaching.^ 

* Economists estimate the direct cost of disease at $2,000,000,000 annually. Since most 
diseases are caused by ignorance of the laws of physiology and of the principles of hygiene, 
it is obvious that to increase intelligence is to decrease this immense charge. 



354 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

We may well believe that the close of the twentieth cen- 
tury will see this relation very greatly changed. We are 
now in the illogical position of saying that the public service 
of a school superintendent to his entire community is less 
desirable and valuable than that of a clergyman who min- 
isters to a single church, or that of a physician who attends 
a single group of families, or that of a lawyer who looks 
out for the interests of a single group of clients. In the 
concrete, we are in the illogical position of saying that the 
two men whose services as city superintendents now reach 
in one case three million and a half of people, and in the 
other case two million, are worth only ^io,cx)0 and ;J8ooo 
each respectively, when there are many clergymen, doctors, 
and lawyers in their communities receiving, for no more 
competent professional service, benefiting relatively very 
few people, incomes ranging from ^20,000 to ;^5o,ooo and 
$100,000 each. When education has become a completely 
developed profession, no such comparative condition will 
exist. Our good sense will cause us to remedy so palpable 
an absurdity, so flagrant an injustice. 

In the average American community of culture, from 
twenty-five to forty per cent of its taxes are expended 
upon the schools. This percentage is steadily rising. Of 
the money expended for schools, about forty per cent is 
expended for teachers' salaries. This percentage is steadily 
rising. More than one sixth of the entire population of 
this country attends school every year. This percentage 
is steadily rising. The average length of a child's school 
life is increasing. The number of days each year given to 
school-going is increasing. Four fifths of one per cent of 
our entire adult population is now engaged in teaching. 
This percentage is steadily rising. The stupendous and 
overwhelming fact is, that, with the single exception of 



SALARY, TENURE, AND CERTIFICATE 355 

farming, school-keeping is now quantitatively (and should 
be qualitatively) the greatest single occupation in this 
country. It is yearly growing in dignity, importance, and 
public esteem. 

In the public schools, the key to the educational situation is the 
same key that unlocks the financial resources of the municipality. As 
long as our schools must depend upon taxes and upon bond issues, the 
interests of education are necessarily involved in the great problem of 
taxes. Interesting and important as this problem is, and vital as it is 
to the cause of education, it lies outside of the especial subject of this 
book.i 

When education has secured as large a proportion of 
members of the first excellence in native ability, training, 
and in character as law, medicine, and theology have long 
had, its exponents will become very influential factors in 
American life, and their salaries will correspond.^ 

An apparently unfortunate feature of the teaching pro- 
fession is that the class of society from which most teachers 
are recruited is decidedly poor. Many men are teaching 
school simply for the reason that they had insufficient 
money, not merely to go into the so-called learned profes- 
sions of law or medicine, but even into business.^ 

* See Appendix XI. 

2 There are three social grades in the economic world, — the wage-earner, the salary- 
receiver, and the capitalist. These grades are intersected by the division of society into public 
and private citizens. The most independent man is the private capitalist, the most influ- 
ential, the rich government official. The policy of all European and Asian governments has 
been to make every high government ofl|cial rich. Our policy has been the contrary, — to keep 
or to make every government officer poor. A change in this policy is certain to come, and when 
it comes will involve all public school administrators, and will affect favorably all teachers also. 

• This fact is indicated in a rather humorous incident. A superintendent employed a 
young man who gave very satisfactory service except from the point of view of culture. One 
day this young man said to him, rather haughtily: " Well, if my father had not died just when 
he did, I would have been in the meat business in your city." When asked to explain, he 
said his father had selected a suitable vacant store in the city for a butcher's shop, but on his 
way back to his home town was taken ill and died. When the family settled the estate, the 
young man had as his share just enough money to go through the normal school. In other 
words, the youth was too poor to become a butcher, but had enough means to become a 
teacher. 



356 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

From certain points of view, it may seem desirable that teachers 
should be recruited from the ranks of poverty. But from certain other 
points of view, this is a misfortune. 

1 . Since most teachers are poor, they are accustomed to conditions 
that do not greatly inspire them, or tend to stimulate them in arousing 
the ambitions of their children. The finest quality in American society 
is the opportunity to rise in the world, but the teacher who resolutely 
faces a life upon $400 or $500 a year has renounced this opportunity. 

2. Whether it is pleasant or not to admit the fact, the poor are char- 
acterized by a lack of culture in relation to material things. I firmly 
believe that the poor ^ are better morally than any other class in American 
society, but the poor have little opportunity to develop either the intel- 
lectual or the aesthetic qualities of human nature. Consequently, we 
find the teachers themselves somewhat opposed to the movement for 
broadening and enriching the lives of children beyond the straitened 
conditions of their own early environment. 

3. The fact that most teachers have been born and brought up in 
poverty makes them subservient toward their official superiors and 
tyrannical in relation to their own inferiors, — the children. This is an 
unpleasant thing to say, but the fact cannot be ignored.'^ 

4. But the most trying feature connected with the fact that in our 
public schools most teachers were born poor, is that they have no means 
of supplementing their incomes ; • hence, they must live as teachers, 
in bare and confined circumstances, — usually a small bedroom. 
While their subjects tend to enlarge their imaginations and to give 
them strong desires to travel, to own books, and to hear lectures and 
concerts, their purses do not permit them any of these "extravagances." 
Consequently, most teachers are in an anxious and discontented state 
of mind. The result in the schools is obvious.* 

1 1 define poverty as that condition in which one has for one's self and for one's natural 
dependents income and capital insufRcient to supply all the necessaries of life, physical and 
intellectual, according to the normal standards of the prevailing civilization. 

2 In a certain city, the president of the school board was the manager of a large depart- 
ment store. In that city, the average salary for teachers was $300 a year. When an effort 
was made in his community to raise salaries, he remarked scornfully, " Those teachers are no 
better than the salesladies in my store, and few of them get more than $6 or $7 a week." 

* I scarcely need say that in communities where teachers are boarders, all teachers ought 
to receive a suf&cient income to have as a home at least three rooms, — one a sitting room and 
library, another a bedroom, and the third a separate bathroom. Until the teachers of this 
land have living rooms to which they can decently invite any guest, they have the right 
to feel that they are not justly treated by the republic which they serve. 



SALARY, TENURE, AND CERTIFICATE 357 

The cities control the nation. Nearly all people of in- 
fluence live in communities. In modern American com- 
munities, the social life is larger than the individual life. 
It requires more energy and results in wear and tear. 
Consequently, it requires more than the individual life for 
its maintenance and progress. 

All teachers live the social life. They are ceaselessly 
drained of their physical strength and health, of their time 
and thought, of their incomes. We wear out fast, wearing 
out our health, our clothes, our minds, our money. 

The teacher works always in the presence of people. 

Exhausted teachers are constantly following each other 
out of the profession, out of life. This wear and tear is a 
potent cause of the brief average term of a teacher's fol- 
lowing the work, five years for the whole nation. A few 
die ; most quit, tired and dissatisfied financially. 

Instances are common among women teachers who, failing to secure 
salary increases desired, accept offers of marriage hitherto declined, or 
go into profitable business pursuits. 

The physician has his patients one after the other, with 
many a drive in the open air between times. 

The teacher has his or her impatients, fifty at a time, 
for three hours at a stretch, twice daily. In wear and tear 
of nerves, of physical strength, of that moral virtue which 
is the very life of the good teacher as of the good doctor, 
there is little to choose between the two professions. Yet 
the trained nurse, with her well-earned $25 a week and 
board, receives in most communities far more than the 
trained teacher. 

The teacher must grow. Progress is the price of his or 
her continuance in well-doing. Growth requires expendi- 
ture of time and of means. The teacher is usually both 



358 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

overworked^ and underpaid. Overworked people have no 
time and strength by which to protect themselves and to 
get their rights. They need attorneys. 

It is often difficult to diagnose the overwork of young 
teachers, and most teachers are comparatively young. 
Youth conceals overwork until the crash comes. Too great 
devotion is a strange form of sin. 

The first teachers in Virginia were bond-servants. 

Rome learned Greek philosophy from slaves. 

We are free and work for wages. 

The early teachers of American schools were wont to sit 
and sew and rest among their children. They passed the 
day with the little folks. Modern teachers work under 
pressure ; supervisors are their overseers. We are wage- 
servants. 

In the immense gains of wealth made by the American 
people since the invention of steam engines and machin- 
ery, teachers have had too small a share. In the year 
1800, the average wealth per capita scarcely exceeded 
$100. In the year 1900, it was ^1200 for men, women, 
and children, workers and idlers. (Every American sol- 
dier costs ^1000 a year for wages and support.) In this 
period, the free common school, from kindergarten to uni- 
versity, inclusive, has been established and multiplied. 
Medicine has risen from empiricism to an effort at science, 
and surgery has changed from butchery to a wonderful 
art. Lawyers and physicians who succeed secure incomes 
equal to those of successful business men. 

Teachers who hold positions as principals or instructors 
may rightfully expect to be considered successful. They 

^ Most of the overwork is due to incompetence. The skilful can with ease do Many times 
as much as the unskilful do with difficulty. The underpayment relates rathet to the profes- 
sion than to the individual. 



SALARY, TENURE, AND CERTIFICATE 359 

should be persons of far more than average ability and 
education. 

Can the American people, the people of the cities, afford 
to pay successful, highly trained, expert teachers adequate 
incomes? What is an adequate income? This depends 
largely upon locality and size of the community, but it is 
in order to set the standard and should include the fol- 
lowing : — 

Inevitable physical and intellectual living expenses, — 
books, travel, recreation, charities, lectures, social affairs, 
^600. 

Repayment of expenses of education and accumulation 
of a fund for old age. Any teacher's preparation for the 
profession should be worth at least ^5000. This should be 
repaid; it means ^200 a year for twenty years, without 
reference to interest. Every teacher who reaches sixty 
years of age ought to have at least ^10,000 as a fund saved 
up. This means (allowing for compound interest accumu- 
lations) saving ^200 a year for thirty-five years. A pen- 
sion is not enough. The old teacher has a right to a real 
home, his own or her own property. 

Every teacher needs for himself or herself the sabbatical 
year of rest. The children and the youth, the men and 
the women, who nourish their minds and souls upon the 
minds and souls of teachers, need teachers who are well 
physically and alive mentally to the best modern thought. 
Every teacher needs ^1200 at least for the sabbatical year. 
This adds $200 for the saving fund annually. In conse- 
quence, every teacher above twenty-five years of age needs 
at least $1200 a year. In large and wealthy cities, the 
maximum should not be for women less than $2000 or 
$2500, and for men (according to custom), it is likely that 
$500 might justly be added. While we are getting such 



36o ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

salaries for our class teachers, we should be equally ener- 
getic in securing teachers really worth such compensation. 

America, it is alleged, cannot afford to pay these 
"fancy" salaries. Look at these figures: — 

National "drink" bill, annually, $1,450,000,000.1 

National tobacco bill, annually, ;^75o,ooo,ooo. 

National pensions to old soldiers, etc., ;J 145,000,000. 

National educational bill, annually, 1^275,000,000. 

National government, annually, ;?6oo,ooo,ooo. 

All other government, annually, ;^2,ooo,ooo,ooo. 

Total annual American business, to pay wages, rents, 
interest, profits, taxes, insurance, etc., $95,000,000,000.^ 

National wealth, 1904, $90,000,000,000. 

Average annual surplus, 1890- 1900, $2,000,000,000.^ 

We are indeed a very rich nation, paying $250,000,000 
annually for oil and gas light. But we are parsimonious 
in the extreme in paying for, yes, in providing for, the 
illumination of the mind. We pay for alcohol and tobacco 
annually per capita $29, for all forms of education, $3.50. 

If we had the wit to do what wise fathers do, — provide 
liberally for their sons' educations, — the figures for th€ 
nation might be : — 

Alcohol, annually, $400,000,000. 

Tobacco, annually, $250,000,000. 

Education, annually, $1,500,000,000. 

Surplus (gain in wealth), annually, $5,000,000,000.* 

1 American Grocer, 1904. See page 314. Beer alone, $700,000,000, retail. 

2 This total is extremely variable. The year's business of 1894 may not have reached 
$60,000,000,000. 

3 For other figures, see my " American History." See also Appendix II. 

* It is certainly not unwarranted in the educator to call attention to the vast amount of 
wealth now being consumed annually in magnificent town and country houses, the luxuries, 
the services of certain persons, " the upper ten thousand," who by law, and sometimes by 
merit, are able to divert the labor power of America to their peculiar glory. Beer is not our 
only waste : champagne is another. Of course, luxury makes work. So does a fire or a 
tornado. So long as any of my school children must have their poor teeth drawn for want of 



SALARY, TENURE, AND CERTIFICATE 36 1 

Does any teacher hesitate to accept these figures ? The 
reason why America is progressing so fast is because 
there is so much good teaching. If there were five times 
as much ; if children went to school not merely five and 
one half years on the average, but eleven years ; if free 
public evening courses were offered everywhere, — the 
above estimates would prove less favorable than the facts. 

We can well afford to invest more in culture and moral- 
ity — that is, in teachers. The nation gets back, not three 
per cent interest, but many hundred per cent. 

The true American gospel is the gospel of salvation by 
education. The God of Nature plants in nearly every 
child the potency of great service. Sufficient education 
can make almost any one nobly useful to humanity. The 
School gives the State its character, multiplies the efficiency 
of the people, and creates wealth by increasing wisdom. 

Why cannot we go forward faster } Because, as a pro- 
fession, we have never seriously questioned things as they 
are. Because the school superintendents and principals 
who ought to be the attorneys for the teachers are not. 
Because all persons deal with their employment as indi- 
viduals, while the employers, the community of parents, act 
as a unit. Because the subordinates are unwilling to face 
and to correct the errors of incompetent superiors. Be- 
cause we look at the small incomes of the country people 
and forget the inconceivably great riches of the fortunate 
few in the cities. Because, though teachers, we ourselves 
do not know the real facts of American wealth and the 
essential purpose of Americanism, to give opportunity to all. 

means for proper dental services, though both father and mother work, my opinion of the par- 
tial iniquity of the present economic regime is unlikely to change. The only law that is law 
forever is the law of Jesus Christ, whose law the despised Samaritan obeyed. Nations must 
obey that law or perish, as history testifies. Luxury, like ambergris, is the product of dis- 
ease. Judging no individuals, but glossing no facts, the educator may consider the education 
of a nation to its duty as a democracy, — to order justly the distribution of wealth. 



362 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

There are, indeed, many incompetent subordinates in 
the schools ; the salaries are too low to guarantee that all 
teachers shall be of the first quality. We must remember, 
it may be in bitterness of heart, that as a profession we 
are getting not very much less than we are now worth. 
The law of supply and demand, of quality for price, is 
generally fair. We are cheap partly because many of us 
are not very competent. But there is a way to remove 
subordinate teachers for incompetence or unfaithfulness, 
a way for the educators themselves. There is, however, 
no way yet provided by which incompetent superiors may 
be removed by professional action. Few teachers dare to 
say anything. There are no associations or councils ready 
to speak. 

Physicians may, and do, unite and fix their own fees. 
They provide the entire membership of boards of health of 
States and often of communities. Even in this age of the 
decline of the ministry, priests and preachers fix the mem- 
bership of their own professions and have larger control 
of parish finances than teachers at the present time dare 
to expect. As for lawyers, they are indeed a " law unto 
themselves." With these professional people and their 
incomes, when successful, in mind, consider these financial 
standards for successful teachers : — 

Principals of i6-room elementary schools, minimum $3000 
Principals of elementary schools, maximum . . J 10,000 
Teachers of elementary schools, minimum . . . ;gi200 
Teachers of elementary schools, maximum . . . $3000 

Let us think of these things. They mean much to the 
generations ahead. It may be well also to undertake 
physical as well as mental, and moral as well as physical, 
athletics, for there is a warfare to come. 



SALARY, TENURE, AND CERTIFICATE 363 

Teachers save every generation from barbarism and all 
that is good in the world from, wreck. There is no person 
of any considerable value, from Boston to San Francisco, 
who is not the art product of teachers.^ In a profound 
sense, we are the parents of the national intelligence, and 
our reward in gratitude and wealth is not much better 
than that of most parents from their children. 

The great barrier can be removed, and things will be 
better all around. This barrier is the place-getting and 
place-holding and perhaps hard-working school superin- 
tendent, who nevertheless is often an immeasurable injury 
to the schools. The public, even the public on boards of 
education, usually cannot discriminate between the very 
active superintendent who does many things worth while 
and the one perhaps equally active who does nothing 
worth while. The idle incompetent is less dangerous than 
the energetic. The political superintendent is afraid to 
advocate high salaries, for his mission is to employ sub- 
ordinates for low salaries and to gloss over their deficien- 
cies. He protects principals who have not changed a 
single idea in a score of years, and then wonders why his 
schools are not highly favored by the public. His state is 
indeed pitiable. He may be called a "high-salaried offi- 
cial," but in point of fact there are in teaching no salaries 
any self-respecting physician or lawyer or banker would 
call " high " ; and as for being an official, he is humble 
enough toward his creators. 

A very intelligent and highly trained teacher who did admirable work 
said of her principal, a routinist : " I am sick at heart whenever I talk 

1 For the details of the education of Abraham Lincoln, see his Life by Tarbell, Vol. II, 
pp. 32-34, and also his Life by Curtis. He acquired a good high school education, employ- 
ing private teachers. See my American History, p. 366. In a certain city, an attack upon 
grammar and high schools, by a "self-made man," who argued that our greatest President 
had no education, was met successfully by a board member who knew the facts. 



364 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

with him. He is more hopeless than a wooden Indian. He has less 
mental activity, less ingenuity, less sympathy than my poorest pupil." 
This remark, though not far from true, cost the modern teacher her 
place. Discharge is sometimes a recommendation. 

The removal and the extinction of the superintendent 
who does not regard all teachers, all parents, all the chil- 
dren, as his clients in a sacred trust, to win for them all 
that can be secured from the world, can be accomplished 
by educational councils of the teachers, led by persons who 
need to look to no others with fear for favor. Then the 
day will pass forever when the sincere exponent of educa- 
tional opinion is met with the admonitions : " It's best to 
be cautious." "Don't do this, for it's not wise." "You 
may lose your place if you say that out loud." 

Why is it that so many superintendents have preferred 
not to be tried by their peers ? Because too many rise to 
place and influence, though not to affluence, for which they 
are educationally unprepared. 

Are these things so } If so, they ought not to be. And 
if they ought not to be, our duty lies plain before us. 

Many questions have arisen as to what should be the proportion of 
salaries for superintendents, principals, and teachers in a school sys- 
tem, in order that it may be little less than perfect, though not ideal. 
The following figures for a school system of one hundred teachers are 
suggested. By means of such salaries as these the school community 
of four thousand children can have the best teachers now available in 
the United States. 

Superintendent of schools, $5000, with five-year term of office, or 
else indefinite tenure.^ 

High school principal, $4000, with life tenure. 

Elementary supervisor, $3500, same tenure, as indeed in the case of 
all other teachers of proven competence. 

1 The highest officers should be allowed traveling expenses to visit schools, candidates, 
associations, and be given secretaries, and all office expenses, such as postage. Amazing as 
it may seem, in many schools, principals must buy all office stationery, etc. These are petty 
matters, but they reflect the intelligence of the community. 



SALARY, TENURE, AND CERTIFICATE 365 

Complete grammar school principals, $3000. 

Head supervisors of art and music, $2500 each. 

Head supervisors of manual training and physical culture, $2000 each. 

High school teachers and other specialists, minimum, $1000, maxi- 
mum, $2500, with life tenure after first year. 

Grammar grade teachers, including kindergartners, minimum, $600, 
maximum, $1800, same tenure.^ 

In such a system, the clerk or secretary of the board would receive 
$1800 to $2500. And there would probably be a business manager, 
also, upon a similar salary or one somewhat higher. 

For such salaries as these, though not ideal, and seldom approxi- 
mated anywhere, a city could be comparatively sure of soon developing 
a system almost faultless. The foregoing list shows what the relative 
salaries should be in a city of twenty thousand anywhere in this country, 
and we may be sure that within a decade the present strong tendency 
in this direction will reach this point. 

A twenty per cent reduction from these figures would insure a fine 
school system. There are indeed not a few cities whose salaries are 
sixty and seventy per cent of these amounts. 

For the salaries of janitors, the following basis is suggested for small 
cities : — 

For the position itself, annually, $100, irrespective of the size of the 
school. 

For every class room, assembly room, and workshop, $60. 

For every fire to be kept, $25. 

For every hundred feet of sidewalk, $25. 

For every acre of ground to be cared for, $100. 

For every evening school or lecture session, add $2. 

All janitors should employ and pay for their own assistants, who 
should be persons acceptable to both board and superintendent. After 
one year, the tenure of janitors should be as good as that of the 
teachers. 

Regarding leaves of absence and absences from sickness, the farther 
we can get from the prevailing practice in relation to teachers the better. 
There is no good reason why municipalities should not grant leaves 
of absence on half pay to deserving teachers. That is a sound business 

* The salaries of the maids, servants, etc. , necessary for the ideal school, should be suf- 
ficient to secure the best assistance available. No employee should be paid so little as to be 
in constant poverty. 



366 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

policy. It would be indeed good policy to require thfe sabbatical year 
of absence. With such a policy, physically worn-out, mentally impover- 
ished, routine, unhappy old teachers, would be almost unknown, much 
to the joy of parents and children, much to the benefit of American 
intelligence. 

Teachers absent on account of sickness are justly entitled to receive 
full pay. This is the time when they need it most.^ 

All substitutes should be paid liberally, but not out of the slender 
salaries of sick people. Nothing conduces more to the loyalty and to 
the enthusiastic industry of a body of teachers to the community than 
salary payments during illness, especially when the illness is long con- 
tinued. Even when a teacher, thus cared for during illness, leaves the 
employ of the community, the reputation for generous humanity inspirits 
all the others. 

Since, in many cities and towns, children are really better off in 
school than out of it, and since teachers must have, at least, the two 
months' summer vacation, lest their health be wrecked, and should have 
breathing times for rest and study combined, a plan has been suggested 
to divide the school year into two major and two minor terms, the 
former of four months, the latter of two months each. After each term 
is to be a week of vacation. In the major terms, September-December 
and March-June, the chief work is to be intellectual and with books ; in 
the minor terms, January-February and July-August, the chief concern 
is to be with physical and technical subjects. In the minor terms, 
defective work is to be made up. It is proposed where such plans go 
into effect that class teachers will teach a major and a minor, omit 
a major, teach a minor and a major, omit a minor, etc., and after perma- 
nent appointment receive regular monthly pay throughout the year. 
The advantages of this to health and intellectual vigor are obvious. 

It remains to discuss briefly the tenure of teachers. It 
is desirable that teachers shall pursue their work with- 
out fret or worry while they continue in the profession, 
or at least in their present school. The State govern- 
ment, after rigid examination, should pay annually those 
young men and women in the normal schools who, in the 

* See G. S. Hall, " Psychology of Adolescence," Chapter VII, for an argument wherein 
is displayed conclusively the fitness of the custom of allowing women teachers at least two 
days' absence every month with full pay. This applies especially to young women. 



SALARY, TENURE, AND CERTIFICATE 367 

judgment of the principal and faculty, are likely to be suc- 
cessful in teaching. Since the United States government 
can afford to pay its cadets in the naval and military 
academies several hundred dollars a year to learn how to 
make war, certainly the State government can afford to 
pay the educational students who are learning how to make 
civilization. War is a social disease. Education is health. 
These young people while definitely pursuing pedagogical 
courses should receive from $300 to ^500 a year after the 
first year. 

The first point in the program of educational progress is that the 
minimum salary to be paid in any State for teachers should be at least 
$400, of which the State, from general taxes, may well pay $200, leaving 
the local community to pay the balance. When financially possible, 
the State should pay one half of all salaries. Such a measure would 
immediately tend to raise all salaries. 

The second point in the program of reform is that the entire employ- 
ment of teachers ought to be in the hands of professional educators. 

The third point places in the hands of educators the transfer and 
discharge, as well as original appointment, of all teachers. 

The fourth point in the program is that after the first year in the 
■position the teacher's tenure at the salary should be absolute, except 
for immorality or incompetence. 

The fifth point is that advancement in salary, or in position and 
salary together, should be made only upon the basis of examination 
in new studies and of proven successful experience. 

The sixth point is tenure of office or a fixed term for school superin- 
tendents, supervisors, and principals. 

The seventh is a pension for actual disability, the amount to be one 
half of last salary. 

In view of this program there are needed several dif- 
ferent certificates. 

I. The first principle of the certificate is that it should 
be not a license to teach but a real witness of competence. 
The ordinary license of the teacher is little more than a 



368 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

permission to teach, purchased, as it were, by so many 
hours of study. 

2. The second principle is that no examiner of teachers 
should be anything else than himself a certificated teacher. 
He should owe his own certificate to other certificated 
teachers. 

3. The third principle is that every person anywhere in 
the State or local school system should be a teacher with 
a certificate. This principle applies to the State superin- 
tendent as well as to the kindergartners. 

4. The fourth principle is that the examinations should 
be thorough and extensive and should be both written and 
oral. In present practice, most teachers* examinations 
are too easy and constitute a menace to the welfare of 
children and youth. 

The first of the certificates is the diploma of a normal school, or 
accredited college, with at least a one-year course in the history of 
education, which should be sufficient to admit a teacher to trial for one 
year. This constitutes the apprentice's certificate. 

The second certificate should be secured upon the exhibit of the first 
and proof of at least one year's successfiil experience, and examination 
in two professional studies. Advanced Psychology ^ and Theory and 
Practice should be necessary for a life certificate good for any ele- 
mentary class position in the State. 

The third certificate should be for high school instruction, and should 
be granted only to persons who are graduates of accredited colleges 
with at least one year of professional post graduate work. It should 
be valid for only one year. 

The fourth certificate should be for the same position, but perma- 
nent. It should be granted upon similar conditions to those control- 
ling the elementary school teacher's certificate. 

The fifth certificate should be one requiring an exhibit of either the 
second or fourth certificates, and should involve proof of special studies 

* See Appendix III; Hall, "Psychology of Adolescence," Preface and Chapter XIV; 
and Spaulding, "The Individual Child and his Education" (4 Nos.)> especially notes by 
editor. 



SALARY, TENURE, AND CERTIFICATE 369 

for administration and supervision. This should be valid and requisite 
for principalships and superintendencies. 

The sixth certificate should be granted upon exhibit of either the 
second or fourth, or else upon examination to test the special fitness of 
candidates for positions as supervisors in special subjects. This 
certificate should be good for one year. 

The seventh and last certificate should be permanent like the second, 
fourth, and fifth, and should be granted upon exhibit of the fifth, and 
proof of one year's successful experience, together with continued post 
graduate studies. 

These seven certificates should be the sole certificates for the entire 
State. To say this is to charge the present " system " with being really 
chaos. It is unwarranted that the normal school diploma should be- 
come a life certificate to teach anywhere in the State merely upon proof 
of one or two years' experience. The normal school diploma is too 
easily obtained to warrant such a regulation. More objectionable still 
is the provision in many States for allowing every separate municipality 
to issue certificates. It is far better to remove the certificating authority 
to a point remote from local influence. We do not allow the commu- 
nities to issue medical certificates, and there is no good reason to 
allow them to issue pedagogical certificates ; in fact even less, for the 
doctors do not, by means of their certificates, draw upon public tax 
funds. Moreover, the incompetence of the physician at most means 
but physical death, while that of the teacher may mean far worse. 

The final upshot of this whole matter of salary, tenure, 
and certificate is that the welfare of the American people, 
the permanence of democracy, depends upon free public 
education, upon its extent and thoroughness, and upon its 
vitality. Liberty is a matter not only of the heart but also 
of the mind ; and all those who realize this will constitute 
themselves enthusiastic advocates of the severest restric- 
tions upon the entrance of teachers into the profession, 
and of far greater rewards than now fall to those compe- 
tent to direct the development of boys and girls, thereby 
determining the development of the American society of 
the future. 



^^ 



APPENDIX I — AGES IN GRADES 



The probable ages and grading per thousand boys and girls under 
twenty-one years of age in a community of fair intelligence in a State 
that enforces compulsory attendance for all children under fourteen 
years of age may be represented as follows, namely : — 

Age in Years Number in School in 



Kindergarten. 



4- 5 


32 


5-6 


75 ) 


6-7 


100 ■ 


7-8 


105 


8-9 


108 


g-io 


105 


lO-II 


100 


XI-I2 


95 


Xa-13 


90 


J3-X4 


80 


14-15 


70 


15-16 


40. 


x6-if 


20 


17-18 


8 


18-19 


3 


Z9-20 


2 


20-21 


X 



Grammar School (elementary grades). 



. High School (secondary grades). 
j- College, etc. 

In a fifth-year class, completing its grade, with four years more before 
entering the high school, the ages of the pupils are likely to be as 
follows, namely : — 





Number on Basis 




Number on Basis 


Age in Years 


OF 50 


Enrolled 


Age in Years 


of so Enrolled 


9 




3 


13 


7 


zo 




zz 


14 


3 


zz 




13 


15 


2 


za 




10 


16 


X 


A year hence it will 


probably be as follows ; namely : — 


Age in Years 


Number, Total 45 


Age in Years 


Number, Total 43 


xo 




3 


14 


6 


zz 




II 


15 


a 


Z2 




12 


16 


X 


13 




zo 







371 



372 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



When the State's compulsory attendance age limit is the fifteenth 
birthday, the result is likely to be as follows, at the close of the seventh- 
year class, two years below the high school, namely: — 



Age in Years Number, Total 36 



Z3 

13 



3 
10 



Ace in Years 

14 
15 
16 



Number, Total 36 
8 
3 



In short, though five years intervene between the fifth year (elemen- 
tary school) and the tenth year (first high school year), usually the 
average difference in age between the two classes does not exceed three 
and a half years. The younger and the brighter school children con- 
stitute almost the entire group that goes to the high school. 

Of 1000 children in an elementary school, nearly 700 are usually in 
the kindergarten and the first four years following, and not many over 
300 in the four years below the high school. Whereas, even allowing 
for a death rate of twenty per thousand, the statistics would lead us to 
expect five ninths, or 555, in the lower five years and 445 in the upper 
four years. 

These 1000 children, if all were to go to a four years' high school 
course, would be reduced to 445 theoretically, whereas the community 
of the size indicated that actually sends 100 of its children to the high 
school is relatively fortunate. Even then, four fifths of these will be in 
the first two years. 

We have, therefore, this condition in a thirteen-year course, which 
may be taken as standard, though not ideal. 

13th year - 
1 2th year 
nth year 
loth year 

9th year 

8th year 

7th year 

6th year 

5th year 

4th year 

3d year 

2d year 

1st year 



The province of the high school principal; voluntary at- 
tendance at high school, a selected class of pupils. 



Voluntary attendance; grammar 
grades. 

j- Partly voluntary ; partly compulsory. 

Primary grades ; compulsory attend- 
ance after 2d year. 

Kindergarten ; voluntary attendance. 



The province of the 
grammar school 
principal. 



APPENDIX II 373 

APPENDIX II. — WEALTH 
I. THE FACTS 

A. Among statisticians, official and unofficial, — the government ex- 
perts, the university professors, the publicists, and others who study 
the subject for business purposes, — there is no disagreement as to 
the amount of American wealth in the year 1903, namely, about 
$95,000,000,000.1 -phe average American, man, woman, and child, 
black and white, from Maine to California, from Florida to Washington, 
owned in 1903 over $1200 worth of property. The average family was 
worth about $6000. 

B. The United States appears to produce annually from $50,000,000,000 
to over $100,000,000,000 worth of wealth, averaging $90,000,000,000.* 
The average person, young and old. North, South, East, and West, pro- 
duces and receives on the average annually $1200 ; while the average 
family produces and receives a little less than $6000 annually. 

C. The average annual increase in wealth is over $2,000,000,000. 
Despite the enormous wastes of luxury,^ sports (especially horse racing), 

* See articles by M, G. Mulhall and Edward Atkinson, and reports of U. S. Bureau of 
Labor, U. S. Census Bureau. All statements in this Appendix are based upon publica- 
tions of standard authority or upon conference and correspondence with American and 
European experts. 

2 This opinion is based upon a close study of National, State, and municipal government 
reports, of the balance sheets of railroad and manufacturing corporations, and of the circula- 
tion of money. In prosperous times, the entire currency appears to circulate in four weeks, 
in times of adversity scarcely once in four months. The oftener money circulates the more 
frequent are the opportunities of profit and the higher is the average per cent of profit. A 
vast expansion of credit means the hope of high and frequent profits; a sudden contraction, 
fear for the safety of the capital itself. From the same study, it appears that wages on the 
average represent twenty per cent of the price received for the product. The rest goes for inter- 
est, taxes, rent, insurance, advertising, waste (and sinking fund) , and profit. Advertising cost 
$2,000,000,000 in 1903, nearly eight times as much as all forms of education. It appears that 
four-fifths of the incomes of our people are paid in the forms of dividends, interest, rents, 
profits, and government salaries. Few teachers receive any income from private sources. 
Most teachers have made no investment for their education ; some have invested from $500 
to $2000 for a normal school education, a few from $1000 to $3000 for a college education, here 
and there one from $500 to $5000 for a university postgraduate education. For the wage- 
earning, non-capitalistic teacher to save capital out of the small wages now received is to turn 
aside from opportunities for higher culture and therefore greater teaching service. 

9 In order to prevent these remarks from being misconceived, let it be understood that 
American teachers are not communistic, and have no desire whatever to divide up among 



374 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

liquor, tobacco, vice, disease, and crime, all of which together include 
the withdrawal of several million workers from the number of the pro- 
ducers of beneficial wealth, the nation is fast growing richer. We save 
annually $300 per person. 

II. THE APPLICATION 

The two economic causes of the average low salaries of school teach- 
ers, namely, one fourth of the average income of all the workers and 
non-workers in our country, are periods of industrial depression and the 
country population. Industrial depressions always follow panics, and 
panics are the result of the effort of our people in periods of prosperity to 
earn six per cent, eight per cent, twelve per cent upon our capita^ when 
we can really earn only (save) about three per cent, that is, $2,500,000,000 
upon $90,000,000,000. Teachers are employed all the time, in years of 
depression ^ as well as in years of elation ; but having no unions by 
which to force the salaries of the panic years up to reasonable amounts, 
their increases are due only to public good will and are very small. 
Because their incomes are public, they are well known and easily reached 
by the democratic will to retrench. Teachers are not paid average 
incomes, taking good years with bad, but minimum incomes. 

Still more important than the above cause is that the teaching forces 
of the cities are regularly recruited from the country. The dollar, in all 
matters of labor, has far greater purchasing power in rural than in urban 
districts. But the wealth of the nation is concentrated in the cities for 

themselves the $9,000,000,000 of wealth of the 3000 American millionaires, though it would 
give them the tidy sum of $2000 each. On the contrary, we believe that higher salaries 
for teachers would vastly increase American wealth and incomes by improving the industry 
and skill of employers and of employees. To spend annually $50,000,000 on pianos and only 
$275,000,000 on schools, seems out of proportion, though no one would argue seriously 
against the pianos. 

^ This capital includes not only wealth invested in buildings, machinery, and other wealth- 
producing facilities, but also capitalized land rents, which are purely a drain upon our re- 
sources. The land cost no one anything to produce. The real effort has been to earn from 
six per cent to twelve per cent, or even more, upon the business capital, after paying rents 
and interests upon some thirty or more billions of dollars of property in land. A great deal 
of wealth is not private property {e^, a public highway), and a deal of property is not real 
wealth {,e.^, a mortgage) . 

> As President A. T. Hadley of Yale University pointed out a dozen years ago, in panic 
years, fictitious capital, excessive " good will," overdue but unearned interest, profits, wages, 
and salaries above their market value are all wiped out. In the depression that follows, 
we build anew from " rock bottom." Then the poor '* pay the piper" whose melody set sa 
much business in the dance of speculation. 



APPENDIX II 375 

expenditure and consumption. Even the poor of the cities have more 
money to spend than the well-to-do of the country districts, as any 
visitor to city places of amusement sees at once. In the country, a 
family with $1000 income is comfortably situated; in the city of a 
million people, that family is poor. In the country, $10,000 a year is 
wealth ; in the great city, where ordinarily good houses rent for from 
$3000 to $5000, it is only a competence. In the country, $1,000,000 a 
year is unknown. There are a hundred families in the great cities 
whose incomes are greater than that. The bricklayer who would get 
$2.50 a day in the country expects and gets from $5 to $7.50 a day in 
the city and strikes for more because he really needs it. So long as the 
theory continues that a good country teacher will make a good city 
teacher, and a good country principal a good city principal, the salaries 
of city teachers and principals will be only slightly more than country 
salaries, and this irrespective of whether or not the particular city 
teacher was country bred. 

In conclusion : As a people, we spend too much upon bricks and too 
little upon brains, too much upon beer and tobacco and too little upon 
art and music, too much for personal service and too little upon profes- 
sional, too much upon luxuries and too little upon lives, too much upon 
drugs and too little upon hygiene, too much upon the amusement of 
the happy and too little upon the alleviation of the sorrowful, too much 
for the glorification of Mammon* and too little for the elevation of 
Man.2 

* Compare the interior of the ordinary city bank with that of the ordinary schoolhouse, and 
aslc. Which is dearer to us, money or manhood? Yet Speaker J. G. Cannon of the House of 
Representatives said, on July 24, 1904, in the Republican address of nomination to President 
Theodore Roosevelt, three things are " essential to the prosperity of a great people, material 
well-being, education, and statecraft." And what is statecraft but native talent quickened 
by education, and what is native talent usually but being born of well-educated parents? 

3 The function of the educator is completely discharged when he calls attention to the con- 
ditions requiring remedial legislation. Expert political economists rather than educators are 
required to show the American people a way to provide reasonable incomes for teachers out 
of the wealth now being produced. So many educators have studied none of the political 
sciences that I may be permitted to call attention to some of the standard works : — 

Political Economy, F. A. Walker. Introduction to Political Economy. L. Cossa 
(several translations). Principles of Political Economy. C. Gide, translated by Vedetz. 
Outlines of Sociology, L. Gumplowicz, translated by F. W. Moore. Principles of Soci- 
ology. F. H. Giddings. Principles of Sociology. H.Spencer. Statistics and Economics. 
R. Mayo-Smith. Statistics and Sociology. R. Mayo-Smith. The Past in the Present : 
What is Civilization f A. Mitchell. Social Control. A. E. Ross. History of the 
Science of Politics. F. Pollock. Introduction to Political Science. J. R. Seeley. 
Theory of the State. J. K. Bluntschli, translated by Ritchie, Matheson, and Lodge. 



376 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



APPENDIX III. — LIBRARIES 

A. SCHOOL REFERENCE 

While every school needs first its special class libraries for the pupils, 
it needs also a general reference library. 

1. At least one encyclopedia. 

TAe New International (1902), The Universal (1901), The American 
(1904), Chambers (1901, new), and The Britannica (ninth and tenth 
combined editions, 1902), are all good works; but the last, though 
perhaps the best, is not the first to be bought for a school. 

2. Several dictionaries. 

The International, Worcester, The Standard, The Century, Stormonth^ 

3. Foreign language dictionaries. 

4. Several large illustrated histories of the world. 

5. Several atlases and complete gazeteers. 

6. A Nature library (so-called) ; that is, a complete set of illustrated 
books (or several sets) about animals, birds, insects, plants, geography, 
etc. 

7. Several illustrated works upon the history of art.^ 

8. The great American poets. 

9. The great American historians. ^ 

10. Files of standard literary periodicals. 

^ In the purchase of pictures, there are three standards to all of which every picture should 
conform: — 

z. The picture should be interesting to the children. 

2. It should teach eternal truth. 

3. It should be an art masterpiece, worthy of emulation. In addition, most of the pictures 
should be cheerful in subject. 

* The extent to which the library may be developed is practically unlimited. A good gen- 
eral library of five or six thousand volumes is none too large for a grammar school and is 
really needed in a high school, even in the community with a good free public library. At 
first, it may be wise to purchase only the best works (rather than sets) of the great authors of 
literature, history, science, music, travel, etc. It is highly desirable to take the best periodicals 
of literature and art. Funds may be raised for the purpose by entertainments as well as by 
taxation. The financially profitable school entertainments are those in which the children are 
the chief actors. 



APPENDIX III 377 



B. FOR TEACHERS AND PRINCIPALS 

The list includes only books with suggestions for administration or 
devoted exclusively to the broader matters of education. 

1. A file for several years back of the best teachers' journals and 
magazines. To the list given in the preface may be added : — 

Tfie ypurnal of Education, The Teachers' Institute, The Pedagogical 
Seminary, The School Review, Primary School, American Teacher, 
The Journal of Psychology , School and Home, The Educational Review, 
and the educational periodicals particularly edited for the section of 
country in which the school is. 

2. Several great publishing houses are now issuing teachers' profes- 
sional libraries. The most extensive are those of Appleton and Heath. 
Others are published by Macmillan, Longmans, American Book Com- 
pany, Silver, Scribners. 

3. A file of the Annual Reports of the United States Commissioner 
of Education. 

4. A file of the Reports of the National Educational Association. 

5. Psychology and Child Study. 

Adolescence ; Its Psychology. 2 vols. G. S. Hall. A vast and profound 

work. 
Talks on Psychology and Life's Ideals, and Psychology. William James. 

Books by a master of psychological science and of the literary art. 
Mental Development. 3 vols. J. M. Baldwin. Probably the greatest 

original contribution by an American to the science of psychology. 

Very interesting. 
Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology. W. Wundt, translated by 

Titchener. 
Outlines of Psychology. O. Kiilpe, translated by Creighton and Titchener. 
The above are two of the greatest available German works ; they make 

the foundation of a library of modern scientific psychology. 
Outlines of Psychology . J. Royce. 
Genetic Psychology. C. H. Judd. 
Habit and Instinct. L. Morgan. 
The Mind of the Child. 2 parts. W. Preyer. 
Conscious Motherhood. E, Marwedel. 
The Play of Man. K. Groos. 
Human Nature Club. E. E. Thomdike. 
Psychology of Childhood. F. Tracy. 
Outlines of Psychology. E. B. Titchener. 
Psychology of Child Development. I , King. 



378 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

Studies of Childhood. J. Sully. 

The Physical Nature of the Child and How to Study It. S. H. Rowe. 
Fundamentals of Child Study. E. A. Kirkpatrick. 

The Child; A Study in the Evolution of Man, and The Child and Childhood 
in Folk-Thought. A. Chamberlain. 

The B<y Problem. W. B. Forbush. 

The Evolution ofDodd. W. H. Smith. 

The Study of Children and Their School- Training. Francis Warner. 
Education of the Central Nervous System, a Study of Foundations. R. P. 

Hallock. 
Psychologic Foundations of Education. W. T. Harris. 
Education as Adjustment. M. V. O'Shea. 

6. Physiology and Hygiene. 

The Hygiene of Transmissible Disease. A. C. Abbott. 

Eye-Strain in Health and Disease. A. L. Ranney. 

Errors of Refraction and Strabismus or Squint, Latent and Fixed. 

F. Valk. 
School Hygiene. E. R. Shaw. 
The Development of the Child. N. Oppenheim. 
The Growth of the Brain, a Study of the Nervous System in Relation to 

Education. H. H. Donaldson. 
Indoor and Outdoor Gymnastic Games. A. M. Chesley. 
School Sanitation and Decoration. Burrage and Bailey. 

7. School Management and Instruction. 

School Management. E. E. White. 

School Management and Social Phases of Education in the School and 

Home. S. T. Button. 
Class Management. J. S. Taylor. 

Principles of Education practically applied. J. M. Greenwood. 
Art of Teaching. E.E.White. 
Art of Study. B. A. Hinsdale. 

Method in Education, a Text-book for Teachers. R. N. Roark. 
A New School Management. L. Seeley. 
A New Manual of Method. A. H. Garlick. 
Talks on Teaching. F. W. Parker. 

8. History and Theory of Education. 

A History of Education. G. Compayr6. 
A History of Education in the United States. E. G. Dexter. 
A History of Education. F. V. N. Painter. 
A History of Education. T. Davidson. 

The Meaning of Education and Other Essays and Education in the United 
States. N. M. Butler. 



APPENDIX III 379 

Education in ike United States, its History and Science of Education. 

R. G. Boone. 
Educational Reform. C. W. Eliot. 
An Ideal School. P. W. Search. 
Education. H. Spencer. 

The Making of Our Middle Schools. E. E. Brown. 
A Broader Elementary Education. J. P. Gordy. 
The Foundation of Education. L. Seeley. 
Educational Aims and Educational Values, P. H. Hanus. 
The School and Society. J. Dewey. 

The Making of Citizens, a Study in Comparative Education. R. E. Hughes. 
Philosophy of Education. J. K. F. Rosenkranz. Translated by A. C. 

Brackett. 
Old Time Schools and School Books, C. Johnson. 
Means and Ends of Education. J. L. Spalding. 
An Experiment in Education. M. R. Ailing- Aber. 
Franklin and Education. D. E. Cloyd. 

The Place of Industries in Elementary Education. K. E^ Dopp. 
Care of Destitute, Neglected, and Delinquent Children. H. Folks. 

9. Miscellaneous. 

Ascent of Man. H. Drummond. 

The Whence and the Whither of Man. J. M. Tyler. 

Education and the Larger Life. C. H. Henderson. 

A History of the Warfare of Science and Theology, A. D. White. 

Psychic Factors of Civilization. L. F. Ward. 

The Rights of Man. L. Abbott. 

Heredity and Social Progress, S. N. Patten. 

Footnotes to Evolution. D. S. Jordan. 

Evolution of Industrial Society. R. T. Ely. 

Science and Education and Methods and Results. T. H. Huxley. 

The Transit of Civilization. E. Eggleston. 

The Buried Temple. M. Maeterlinck. Translated by A. Sutro, 

Through Nature to God. J. Fiske. 

Bibliography of Education. W. S. Monroe. 

Bibliography of Child-Study. L.Wilson. 

Note. — There are two general lines by which to proceed in the improvement of the 
position of the teacher. One is politico-economic. It involves change from weekly or 
monthly wage as an employee to tenure as a salaried office-holder. This change is in the 
external relations of the occupation and effects its political, economic, and social elevation. 
Such is the theme of this book. The other line proceeds to the transformation of the wage- 
occupation into a profession of public service. It involves change in the internal relations 
and necessitates the increase of professional knowledge and skill. In this connection, it is 
well to remember the saying of Carlyle to the effect that books make the university. 



3So 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



APPENDIX IV. — PARLIAMENTARY RULES 



TABLE OF MOTIONS 



Priority as Numbered 



J9£ 



? "i 






I- 
1 ' 





(See Note F) 


I 


I 


Note E 


2 


I 


NoteE 


3 


3 


NoteE 


4 


3 


NoteE 


5 


5 




6 


6 




7 


7 




8 


8 




9 


9 




lO 


lo 


NoteE 


II 


lO 


NoteE 


12 


12 




13 


13 


Note E 


14 


13 


NoteE 


IS 


13 


NoteE 


l6 


13 


NoteE 


17 


17 




i8 


i8 




19 


19 




20 


20 




21 


21 





To fix the time for recess 

To fix the time to which to adjourn 

To take a recess 

To adjourn. See Gushing, p. 89, note 

Question of assembly's privilege 

Question of personal privilege (G) 

Motion for orders of the day 

Appeal on point of order (H) 

Point of order 

Ques'n of considera'n of main motion (i) 

Question of reception of report (I) 

To lay on the table (J) (K) 

For previous question (L) 

To refer to committee 

To postpone to a day certain 

To postpone indefinitely (M) 

To amend an amendment 

To amend (N) 

Main motion (O) (P) 

To reconsider (Q) 

To withdraw motion (R) 



Debate 


Amendment 




(N) 


No (S) 


Yes 


No (S) 


Yes 


No 


No 


No 


No 


Yes 


No 


Yes 


No 


No 


No 


Yes (T) 


No 


No 


No 


No 


No 


No 


No 


No 


No 


No 


No 


No (U) 


Yes 


Yes (V) 


Yes (Y) 


Yes 


No 


Yes (W) 


No 


Yes 


Yes 


Yes 


Yes 


Yes (X) 


No 


No 


No 



Note A. This table is based on Cushing's Manual, Roberts' Rules, Reed's Rules. The first 
is standard, the second systematic, the last brilliant. They are authoritative in 
the order given. Since Roberts' is the most complete, where but one work is 
to be consulted, I recommend it. The first two are in substantial agreement. 
Speaker Reed proposed innovations, e.g: giving previous question higher prior- 
ity. See page 200. 

Note B. Many important matters are necessarily omitted. Fundamental principles of par- 
liamentary procedure are : If possible, support the Chair. Push business rapidly. 
Let committees investigate the facts and prepare the business. In times of un- 
controllable agitation, adjourn. Individuals ought to be definite in debate and in 
motions. When legally possible, better do nothing than do something wrong. 

Note C. The table omits many motions, such as "to close debate," "to limit debate," 
" to make a special order," " to suspend the rules," etc. In general, these motions 
should require a two-thirds vote ; and when the assembly is periodical, there 
should be special rules and by-laws for them. The table omits also appeals on 
questions of privilege. See Note H. 

Note D. By general consent of assembly or unanimous vote, in the presence of the legal or 
constitutional quorum, any rule of parliamentary law may be suspended. But 
legal or constitutional provisions must be literally followed. Unless an inter- 
preting tribunal is set up by the laws of the State or of the constitution itself, the 
majority rules even in questions of constitutional interpretation. 

Note E. Motions of equal priority are not in order at all as soon as one has been made, 
seconded, and stated. 



APPENDIX IV 



3^1 



FOR BOARD AND TEACHERS' MEETINGS, Etc. 
See Notes A, B, C, and D 



Reconsider- 
ation (Q) 
Yes (Z) 
Yes (Z) 
No 
No 
Yes 
Yes 
Yes 
Yes 



Seconding 
(6) 
Must be 
Must be 
Must be 
Must be 
(See Note 7) 
(See Note 7) 
(See Note 7) 
(See Note 7) 
(See Note 1) No second 
No Need not be 

Yes Need not be 

(See Note 2)Must be 



No 

Yes (3) 

Yes 

Yes 

Yes 

Yes 

Yes 

No (4) 

Yes 



(See Note 8) 
Must be 
Must be 
Must be 
Must be 
Must be 
Must be 
Must be (5) 
(See Note 9) 



Writing 
(10) 
Oral is sufficient 
Oral is sufficient 
Oral is sufficient 
Oral is sufficient 
Oral 
Oral 
Oral 
Writing may 

be required 
Oral 
Oral 

Oral is sufficient 
Oral 

(See Note 11) 
Should be in writing 
Oral is sufficient 
Writing required 
Writing required 
Writing required 
Writing required 
Writing required 



Vote 

(12) 
Majority 
Majority 
Majority 
Majority 
Chairman 
Chairman 
One-third 
Majority 
Chairman 
Two-thirds 
Majority 
Majority 
Two-thirds 
Majority 
Majority 
Majority 
Majority 
Majority 
Majority 
(See Note 13) 
Unanimous 



When to be 
Offered 



No speaker 
No speaker 
No speaker 
No speaker 
Any time 
Any time 
Any time 
Any time 
Any time 
Any time 
Any time 
No speaker 
No speaker 
No speaker 
No speaker 
No speaker 
No speaker 
No speaker 
No speaker 
Any time 
Any time 



on floor 
on floor 
on floor 
on floor 



on floor 
on floor 
on floor 
on floor 
on floor 
on floor 
on floor 
on floor 



Note F. By priority, it is meant that the prior motion precedes all less " prior " motions, 
and that, whether made before or after them, it must first be considered. 

Note G. The call to order, where a member calls another to order for any parliamentary 
cause, has same rank and same rules. 

Note H. No other point of order or appeal can be entered while either any point or any appeal 
is pending. Appeals give way to all prior motions. It is good parliamentary 
practice, m order to stop debate, for the chairman's supporters to move to lay an 
appeal on the table. 

Note I. Cannot be made after debate has begun. Under personal privilege, rise and give 
notice as soon as motion is made. See Roberts, pages 47 and 182. 

Note J. Sometimes called, Lie on the table. 

Note K. When seconded, applies both to motion and all amendments irrespective of form 
and substance of its mover's statement. 

Note L. Its mover may direct its application to main motion or any amendment or sub- 
sidiary motion. 

Note M. Opens debate upon every aspect of motion and all amendments. 

Note N. Every amendment to be in order must be germane to the main question. No second 
amendment, not an amendment of the first, is in order. 

Note O. The mover and seconder may accept and incorporate in their motion any amend- 
ment, if no one objects. 

Note P. No motion is before an assembly until stated by the Chair. 

Note Q. A question once decided cannot be brought up in a new form. The reconsideration 
must begin in the old form of the main question. The priority of this motion is 



382 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

highly technical. Consult the manuals. The principle, is Note Z affects it. 
Some authorities rank it as privileged next after motion to adjourn. See Roberts, 
page lo. 

Note R. Can be made by mover only. For its rank, see Roberts, page 35. 

Note S. Debatable when there is no other motion before the house. 

Note T. Not debatable, when indecorum is involved. 

Note U. Debatable as to what instructions and as to which committee. 

Note V. Debatable only as to postponement and to what day. 

Note W. Only the amendment last before the house may be debated. 

Note X. Debatable irrespective of previous question on former consideration ; but if the 
motion to be reconsidered was undebatable, reconsideration itself cannot be 
debated. 

Note Y. The date, either in the motion or in amendment, must not amount to indefinite 
postponement. 

Note Z. Cannot be reconsidered when any action has resulted from former vote. 

Note I. May be withdrawn by its maker, or the chairman may, with or without consulting 
other members, change his decision. 

Note 2. When the vote was to lay on the table, move to take hony the table. ^ 

Note 3. After committee has taken papers or begun action, cannot be reconsidered. Move 
to discharge the committee. 

Note 4. Unless on former reconsideration changes were made. 

Note 5. Must be moved and seconded by members on the side that won. A special rule 
usually provides for reconsideration only on same or next day. This motion is 
apt to be made too frequently. A member may introduce or reintroduce a motion 
as often as he so chooses ; but he can withdraw it only by general consent. 

Note 6. Seconding is not necessary when there is no other business before the house. 

Note 7. The very substance of this motion is the effort to preserve rights. Hence, one 
alone is expected to present the matter to the assembly, sometimes without formal 
motion. Appeals on motions 5, 6, and 8 must be seconded, unless the chairman 
chooses to put the appeal without such second. Often, the chairman asks infor- 
mally for opinions of various members, and he may permit discussion before the 
seconding. On vote on appeal, a majority or a tie sustains the chairman. Spe- 
cial rules often provide that one member alone may secure his rights under per- 
sonal privilege, irrespective of the will of others. See Cushing, page 42. 

Note 8. No attention should be paid to the call unless made by several members or regularly 
moved and seconded. 

Note 9. The seconder must also withdraw his second. 

Note 10. An assembly should make its business formal in proportion as that business is 
important. 

Note II. The instructions should be written. 

Note 12. Special rules often modify these provisions very considerably. Vote means passing 
or adopting a motion. Vote may be taken only when a quorum is present. 
Majority, etc., means of the quorum. 

Note 13. To reconsider a vote requiring two-thirds of the assembly, a two-thirds vote is 
required. This motion can be made even during other business, but cannot be 
taken up until all business prior in time has been disposed of. 



APPENDIX V 



383 



APPENDIX v. — YEARLY ALLOWANCES FOR 
BOOKS, SUPPLIES, Etc. 

As with a household of highly educated people, so with a school, the 
tendency is steadily to increase the demand for funds to meet increasing 
needs. To desire things and services is to live in civilization. The 
following standard of allowances for books, general supplies, manual 
training, etc., is a reasonable minimum where a community means to 
have good schools. With experience, much larger sums can be well 
spent ; and education will be correspondingly improved. 

High School 

Books (per pupil) $2.00 Stationery $1.00 

Manual training 5.00 Incidentals i.oo 

For science apparatus annually per class of 24 pupils ... ^ .... . 35aoo 
For reference books per class of 24 pupils . 50.00 



Elementary Schools 



Grammar Grades, — Books (per pupil) 

Manual training 
Primary Grades. — Books (per pupil) 

Manual training 
Kindergarten, — All supplies per pupil 



. 


■ *i-So 


Stationery , . 




4.00 


Incidentals . . 




I.oo 


Stationery , . 




3.00 


Incidentals . . 



$o.7S 

•50 

0.50 

.25 

I.oo 



General 



For reference books per class of 4a pupils $20.00 

For library (class) per class 25.00 

Evening School 

All books and supplies per class of 24 pupils, excepting science and manual 

training ;$5o.oo 

For evening lectures, $10 to $2$ may be allowed for the lecturer, $5 to $10 for 
his expenses (average) , and $$ for lantern operator. In a public lecture course, 
most of the lectures should be illustrated. 

The foregoing allowances do not include the stereopticon lantern and 
slides for every school, and at least two pianos in every elementary 
school, one for the assembly room and one for the kindergarten. 



3^4 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



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386 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

APPENDIX VIL — SPECIMEN PROGRAMS 

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 

Grade 1 

Time per week in 
minutes 

English 500 

Reading and Phonic Drill 200 

Composition 100 

Spelling 100 

Writing ......... 100 

Number lOO 

Nature Study loo 

Manual Training and Art . . . . . . lOO 

Music 40 

Story-telling (History, Biography, Ethics, etc.) . . 80 

Morning Exercises . 75 

Physical Training 5** 

Intermissions ......... 75 

Unassigned Time ........ 130 

20 Minute Periods I250 

School day 20 minutes shorter than in higher Primary Grades. 
The unassigned time is to be assigned by the Principals as seems best to 
them. 

Grade IV 

Time per week in 
Counts minutes 

English ....... 4 340 

Reading 1-2 125 

Language ...... 50 

Composition ..... 1-2 50 

Spelling (}4 periods) .... 65 

Handwriting ..... 5° 

Arithmetic 3 125 

Nature Study, including Physiology and Hygiene 75 

Manual Training, including Art ... I 275 

Music 25 

History 50 

Geography 100 



APPENDIX VII 



3^7 



Grade IV — Continued 

Morning Exercises (including daily lo minutes' 

singing) 

Assisted Study, chiefly Arithmetic and Composition 

Physical Training 

Intermissions 

Unassigned Time 

25 Minute Periods 



Time i)er 
week in 
minutes 



75 
75 
50 
75 
85 



1350 



Promotion is based upon the studies with counts. See rule to find the 
average^ Appendix XIV. 



Grade VIII 



English .... 

Reading. Home Study 

Composition. Home Study 

Spelling. Home Study 

Handwriting 

Grammar 
Mathematics . 

Arithmetic . 

Algebra 

Constructive Geometry 
Science, including Physiology 
Manual Training, including Art 
Music .... 
History. Home Study . 
Geography. Home Study 
Morning Assembly, including 

Reading and Rhetoricals 
Study .... 
Physical Training 
Intermissions . 
Unassigned Time (chiefly study) 



Scripture 



30 
I iSo 

30 
I 90 

I 90 

75 

150 

50 

75 
160 

1425 

This means net time, i,e.y that each child has at least that number of 
minutes of recitation. 

Principals may assign time as they see fit, but are in no wise to diminish 
the assigned time in any subject. 



Counts 

5 



I-IO 

1-5 

I-IO 

I-IO 

1-2 

1-2 

1-3 
1-6 



Time per week in 
minutes 

315 
90 

30 

45 

30 

120 

90 
60 
30 



180 



388 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



HIGH SCHOOL 



Grade X 

English Rhetoric and Composition .... 

Rhetoricals 

Plane Geometry 

Business Practice ........ 

Biology f year and Physiology \ 

American History | year and Commercial Geography \ . 

English History 

Spelling and Penmanship \ and Commercial Arithmetic \ 
Shorthand and Typewriting , . . , , . 

Latin (Caesar) and Composition 

Greek Grammar and Composition 

German (various authors) Conversation and Composition 

Music 

Drawing .......... 

Wood Working ........ 

Sewing \ year and Cooking \ 

Physical Training 

Black Face — Constants required of all 
Italic — Optional alternatives 
Roman — Electives 



Counts 

per 
Term 


Time per 
week in 
minutes 


3 


i6o 


I 


8o 


5 


200 


5 


200 


3 


i6o 


4 


i6o 


4 


i6o 


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5 


200 


5 


200 


3 


I20 




8o 




8o 




8o 




8o 




8o 



Notes to Appendix VIII, Opposite Page 

The time allotted to each subject is recitation time for each pupil in that subject ; when 
the class recites in two divisions, the teacher should give twice the time indicated to recitations 
in each subject. 

Number of Divisions in a Class. — For drawing, music, Nature study, physiology, 
physical culture, and writing, one division will usually be sufficient in any grade ; for history 
and geography in the primary, and for language, grammar, and spelling in the grammar 
grades, one division ; for all other subjects, two, sometimes three, divisions will usually be 
desirable in the primary grades, while in the grammar grades, there may be one or two divi- 
sions, depending upon the size and grading of the class. 

Order of Exercises. — The more difficult subjects should come before the last half 
hour in the morning. Alternate subjects requiring chiefly skill with those requiring thought. 
Neither writing nor drawing should immediately follow physical exercise, either in or out 
of the schoolroom. Physical exercises should be short and spirited, and should be given 
whenever the fatigue or restlessness of the pupils seems to require it. Music may profitably 
follow the opening exercises. 

Based on Passaic Public Schools, F. E. Spaulding, Superintendent. 



APPENDIX VIII 



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390 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



APPENDIX IX. — DAILY PROGRAMS 
A. GRADE PROGRAMS 



9.00- 9.40 

9.40- 9.50 

9.50-10.00 

10.00-10.30 

10. 30-1 1. 00 

1.15- 1.50 
1.50- 2.15 



9.00- 9.20 

9.20- 9.45 

9.45-10. 10 

10.10-10.30 

10.45-11.00 

11.00-11.20 

11.20-11.45 

1.15- 1-35 

1.35- 1-55 
1.55- 2.20 

2.20- 2.30 

2.30- 3.00 



9.00- 9.15 

9.15- 945 
9.45-10.00 

10.00-10.30 

10.45-11.20 

1 1. 20-1 1.45 

1.15- 1.30 

1.30- 1.45 

1.45- 2.05 

2.05- 2.15 

2.15- 2.30 

2.30- 3.00 



Kindergarten 

Morning Circle. 

Marching. 

Recess. 

Gift. 

Games. 

Occupation. 

Good-by Circle. 

Grade II 

Opening Exercises. 
Arithmetic. 
Reading. 
Spelling. 
Oral Arithmetic. 
Nature Study. 

Language and Composition. Friday, Manual Training. 
Writing. 
Music. 
Reading. 

Physical Training. 

Drawing. Thursday, Manual Training. Friday, 
Composition. 

Grade IV 

Opening Exercises. 

Arithmetic. 

Nature. 

Reading. 

Language and Composition. 

Geography. 

Oral Arithmetic 

Spelling. 

Writing. 

Physical Training. 

Music. 

Drawing. Tuesday and Friday, History. 



Thursday, Manual 
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392 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



APPENDIX X. — CONSPECTUS OF 











MINUTES OF TIME 








Note 


Total Offered 




Grade I. 


Art 
Construction 


} 


I 


1 70 minutes. 




Grade II. 


Art 
Construction 


} 


I 


170 minutes. 




Grade III. 


Art 
Construction 


} 


I 


170 minutes. 




Grade IV. 


Art 




I 


105 minutes. 






Knife Work 
Scroll Sawing 


} 


2 


75 minutes. 






Sewing 




3 


30 minutes. 






Weaving 




4 


45 minutes. 
255 minutes. 




Grade V. 


Art 




I 


90 minutes. 






Knife Work 




2 


60 minutes. 






Basketry 
Weaving 


} 


4 


60 minutes. 






Sewing 




5 


60 minutes. 
270 minutes. 




Grade VI. 


Art 




I 


80 minutes. 






Knife Work 
Bent Iron 


} 


2 


120 minutes. 






Basketry 
Weaving 


} 


4 


120 minutes. 


i year. 




Sewing 




3 


120 minutes. 
440 minutes. 


h year. 


Grade VII. 


Art 




I 


80 minutes. 






Bent Iron 
Knife Work 


} 


2 


120 minutes. 






Basketry 
Weaving 


} 


4 


120 minutes. 


h year. 


■ 


Sewing 




3 


120 minutes. 
440 minutes. 


i year. 



Total, 57 hours of instruction per week offered by the Department. 



APPENDIX X 



393 



MANUAL TRAINING DEPARTMENT 



PER WEEK 



Note Total Offered 



Grade VIII. 


Art 




I 


So minutes. 






Bench Work 




2 


I20 


minutes. 






Basketry 
Weaving 


} 


4 


I20 minutes. 






Household 
Hygiene, etc. 


} 


I 


30 
350 


minutes, 
minutes. 




Grade IX. 


Art 

Bench Work 






90 
90 


minutes, 
minutes. 






Sewing 






90 


minutes. 


I year. 




Cooking ' 






90 
270 


minutes, 
minutes. 


i year. 


Grade X. 


Art 

Wood Working 






90 
90 


minutes 
minutes. 






Cooking 






90 


minutes. 


i year. 




Sew^ing 






90 
270 


minutes, 
minutes. 


^ year. 


Grade XI. 


Art 

Iron Forging 
Lathe Work in 
Metal 


1 




90 
90 


minutes, 
minutes. 






Dressmaking 
Millinery 


} 




90 


minutes. 






Applied 
Chemistry 


} 




90 
360 


minutes, 
minutes. 




Grade XII. 


Art 

Iron Construction 






90 
90 


minutes, 
minutes. 






Dressmaking, 


Grade XI. 










Applied Chemistry, Grade XI. 
















180 minutes. 





1. Required of both boys and girls. 4. 

2. Required of boys. Elective for girls. 5. 



Required of girls. Elective for boys. 
Elective for girls. 



3. Required of girls. 



394 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



APPENDIX XL — TAXATION 

The problem of taxation is to-day the greatest and most difficult problem 
before the American people. This is naturally so in a characteristically indus- 
trial civilization whose chief concern is wealth rather than religion or culture 
or nationality or loyalty to superiors and kindness to inferiors. Our judges 
are not priests living upon gifts, nor are they manorial lords living upon 
rents and services. Our executives and our legislators (theoretically) per- 
form their work for salaries, — that is, for income of wealth, commuted in 
terms of money. The public employee, whether governor or clerk, desires 
money for government enterprises or for personal expenditure; the private 
citizen desires to keep his wealth. The present taxation is the result of this 
struggle. At present, the private citizen is decidedly the winner. Personal 
taxes have become almost an absurdity. In 1904, New York Gity levied upon 
nearly j^7,cxx),ooo,ooo of personal property, of which all but $7cx),ooo,cxx) was 
" sworn off " within two days after the publication of the list. The problem 
of how to get enough money for the schools depends upon the solution of the 
problem of taxation. In the text, I advocate State subsidies to local schools 
based upon number of teachers, days' attendance of pupils, and the installation 
of liberal courses of study. To secure such State funds, resort may be had to — 

1. Inheritance taxes, bearing most heavily upon the large estates and upon 

collateral heirs. 

2. Corporation taxes, upon all corporations, and largest upon public fran- 

chise monopolies. 

To secure more liberal local funds, I know of no objection valid in sound 
economics to taxing ground rent far more heavily than it is taxed now. It is 
a mere personal opinion, based, however, upon some special university studies 
in America and Europe, that our land-ownership system is seriously defective 
in that it encourages monopoly and tenancy. But I am not yet ready to ac- 
cept the proposition not to levy any tax upon buildings, which certainly need 
police and fire protection at public cost. 

The present system exempts most property from taxation ; that is, while it 
protects all property holders, it charges the expense to a few. But this is not 
the worst feature. It starves public enterprises, especially education.^ Inci- 
dentally, by its attendant feature of bond issues, it is building up a class of 
economic aristocrats whose influence in American politics is dangerous to the 
general welfare. The borrower is ever servant to the lender, though the ser- 
vice be indirect and disguised. 

1 Jt may be that wealthy philanthropists will eventually come to the rescue by donating 
buildings and thus leave the public taxation to carry salaries (as some are now doing) ; or 
that they may create endowments of lands or of stocks and bonds to pay salaries (a better 
course, educationally) . In these times of economic feudalism, education seems to need tbi^ 
isame support that religipn had in the times pf politigal mi militaiy feud.9.1is>n> 



APPENDIX XII 395 



APPENDIX XII. — RESIGNATIONS 

The general principle governing resignations is that the superintendent 
should resign as soon as he believes that another man, available for the salary 
and for the conditions of the position, can do better work for the schools than 
he himself can do. Such times are — 

1. When the incumbent is suffering from poor health. 

2. When he has aroused such serious and extensive personal antago- 

nisms in the board and in the community as to be unable to carry 
his measures. 

3. When the board and the community are calling for a degree of school 

betterment that is beyond his wisdom to provide. 

4. When he himself has taken such a dislike to service in the particular com- 

munity, whatever be the cause, as seriously to impair his efiiciency. 

The controlling principle in all educational service is, as stated in the 
text, to make a life work in one community, and not to leave that community 
without cause. The exceptions are those which fall under the above general 
principle of resignations, and two others, — resignations to accept very much 
more desirable positions, and resignations (when leave of absence cannot be 
secured) to pursue advanced studies. The limitation of the general principle 
should be carefully observed : no superintendent whose heart is in his work 
will resign when he foresees that his community desires a less efficient man 
than he himself is. In such a case, he will oppose any attempt to force his 
resignation or to discharge him. 

A board should force a resignation or effect a discharge whenever its mem- 
bers believe that for the salary available, and in view of the conditions of the 
position, a new man can do better work for the schools. An intelligent body 
of men will know that the larger the school system the more important is 
experience in it. An able man needs at least one or two years to learn the 
facts and to adjust himself to the conditions of a school system with several 
thousand pupils. Sometimes, a new man is required because he does not 
know and will not accept the conditions, but will promptly set about creating 
an essentially different school situation.^ 

* The question whether to promote to the vacant superintendency a principal or teacher 
already in the schools does not often arise in cities of less than fifty thousand people. When 
such a principal has been in the system but a few years, at most two or three, and has shown 
▼ery marked ability, the promotion may be wise. But to promote one who for ten or twenty 
years has been content with a subordinate position is usually unwise; it arouses jealousies, it 
insures routinism in the schools, and it prevents the community from securing the services 
pf an axobitious man with natural talents for administration and supervision. 



39<5 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



APPENDIX XIII. — MONTHLY REPORT OF 

FINANCES 

SCHOOL DEPARTMENT 
City of. 

Computed to. igo Presented to Board. igo 



Account 


Appro- 
priation 


Ex- 

FENDED 
TO 

Date 


Balance 

TO 

Date 


Out- 
standing 
Bills & 
Orders 


Fixed 
Charges 

TO 

Nov. 30 


Total 


Balance 
Nov. 30 


Salaries : 
Day Teachers 
Evening Teachers 
Manual Training 
Superintendent 

and Supervisors 
Clerks 

Attend. Officers 
Janitors and Help 

Reform School 

Furniture 

Text-books 

Other Educational 
Supplies 

Building Supplies 

Rentals 

Printing and Adver- 
tising 

Cartage 

Transportation of 
Pupils 

Office Expense 

Livery 

Unclassified 






























Total 
Receipts 
Total 
Balance 































Based upon report form of 



Louis P. Nash, Superintendent 0/ Schools, 

Holyoke. 



APPENDIX XIV 397 

APPENDIX XIV.— CONDUCT— ATTENDANCE- 
STUDIES 

PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

This Report is issued six times in a School Year and is the 

Record of . 

for Gradet in .School 

Daily Work counts equally with Written Reviews in the determination of 
promotion. 

An average of 75 per cent in all studies, taken together, must be attained. 
Failure to attain an average of 50 per cent in either English or Mathematics, 
or of 70 per cent in both together, prevents regular promotion, irrespective 
of general average in all subjects together. 

Any pupil failing in a Grade or in a subject may be promoted upon passing 
a Principal's examination in the subjects of the Grade or in the deficient subject 
with an average of at least 75 per cent in each of the subjects. 

In the High School, an average of 70 per cent must be attained in each 
completed subject, other than English or Mathematics, before it may be added 
to the total number of counts required for graduation. 

A pupil repeating a half-year or a year, upon making an average of 80 per 
cent in all studies and of 75 per cent in English and Mathematics, taken 
together, is entitled to special promotion on trial. 

Unexcused absences are marked as total failures in Daily Work. 

All excused absences may be made up. 

Classes advance from one Grade to the next whenever ready. 

To find the Average : Multiply the average in each subject by the 
number of counts, add the products, and divide their sum by the total 
number of counts for all subjects weekly. 

Remarks by Teacher: 

Class Teacher 

Final Result 

Principal 

[Front of Report] 



398 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



Name. 



SUBJECTS 


No. or 
Counts in 
Average 


No. Reci- 
tations 
Weekly 


First Report 


Second Report 


Third Report 




DW 


WR 


Av 


DW 


WR 


Av 


DW 


WR 


Av 


English . . . 
Arithmetic . . 
Algebra . . . 
Geometry . . 

Average . . 

Reading . . . 
Spelling . . . 
Nature . . . 
History . . . 
Geography . . 
Physiology . . 
Biology . . . 
Physics . , . 
Chemistry , . 
Shorthand . . 
Bookkeeping . 
Latin .... 
Greek . . . 
German . , . 
P'rench . . . 
Drawing . . . 
Man. Training . 
Declamation . 
Essay .... 
Handwriting . 
Music .... 
Current Events 
Phys. Training . 
Kindergarten . 

Average . . 
























Conduct . . . 

No. times tardy 

I days absent . 

Gen'l Qualities 

of Sch. Work 

and Behavior 











For the better information of parents, under last heading, teachers may use such adjectives 
as these, viz. : Neat; untidy; careless; accurate; faithful; irregular; courteous; discourteous. 
Where pupils are particularly defective in certain topics, comments should be entered in detail. 
In the absence of comments, parents may infer that there is no special deficiency. 



APPENDIX XIV 

(Duplicate in ledger or card record.) 



399 



Fourth Refort 



DW WR Av 



Fifth Report 



DW WR Av 



Sixth Report 



DW WR Av 



005 
< es O 

^ < s 



Comments by Teacher 



Arerage, English 
and Mathematics 



Final ATerage 



Kindergarten to Grade II, inclusive: Marks, poor, fair, good, very good. Grades III to 
XII, inclusive : Marks in per cents. 

Note. — By seeing the names of the subjects in the higher grades, the interest of pupils 
and parents is aroused and the school-life is prolonged. 



400 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



SCHOOL YEAR 1904-1905 ' 
Hours of Home Study: Assignment by Rules 



Kindergarten and First Grade 
Second and Third Grades 
Fourth and Fifth Grades . 
Sixth and Seventh Grades 
Eighth Grade . . . 
High School Grades . 
Evening School 



Occasional half hour 

One half hour daily 

One hour daily 

One to one and a half hours 

One and a half to two hours 

. Two to four hours 

. Two half hours weekly 



Parents whose children study more or less than these assignments will 
kindly INQUIRE INTO THE MAITER through the Teachers or Princi- 
pals or notify the Superintendent in writing. 

Only such HOME WORK is to be assigned in which the INSTRUCTION 
AND EXPLANATION by the teacher have been COMPLETE. Parents 
who believe that principles have not been fully explained will KINDLY 
INQUIRE INTO THE MATTER. 

Signature by Parent: 

First Report . „ 

Second Report 

Third Report 

Kindly read ALL printed and written memoranda 

Fourth Report. 

Fifth Report 

Sixth Report 

Kindly read ALL printed and written memoranda 

Comments by Parent: 



[Back or Report] 



APPENDIXES XV AND XVI 40 1 

APPENDIX XV. — RANK OF PUPILS 



PupiL 


M 

n 

•s s 
1 


1 

§•.5 
0. 

1' 




School Grade 

Teacher - 






P!^ 


First Report 








Second Report , 








Third Report . 








Fourth Report 








Fifth Report 








Sixth Report 
















Final Average 









The occasional use of this form — for a special class or a special pupil — is valuable as 
a corrective of false views as to a pupil's relative excellence or deficiency. It may be used 
either to discourage or to forward a request for special promotion. To issue such reports 
monthly to all pupils is unwise. 

APPENDIX XVI. — DAILY ATTENDANCE 

RECORD 

To be sent to Principal's Office at 3 p.m. 
ABSENT: 

P.M. 



A.M. 



CONSECUTIVE NO. 

SESSIONS 



A.M. 



TARDY 

P.M. 



.Teacher 



Room No. School No._ 

Remarks : 



Date. 



402 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



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404 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



APPENDIX XIX. — ANNUAL REPQRT OF 
PRINCIPAL TO SUPERINTENDENT 



Statistical Report of- — 
Year ending- 



-- -School for the 

■I go 

— Principal. 



Number of pupils enrolled 

Number over fifteen 

Number under five 

Number between seven and fourteen 

Average membership 

Average attendance 

Agreggate number of days of attendance 

Per cent of attendance 

Number of absentees 

Number of days of absence 

Number of pupils tardy 

Number of tardinesses 

Number neither absent nor tardy 

Number of truants 

Number of days of truancy 

Number who have received corporal punishment i- 

Number of corporal punishments 

Number of teachers absent 

Number of days of such absence 

Number of teachers tardy 

Number of such tardinesses 

Number of days of actual session 

Number of legal holidays 

Days closed for other reasons 

Number of rooms _ 

Number of sittings 

Number of teachers (male female 



Boys 



Girls 



Total 



File at the office of the Superintendent of Schools on or before July first, 
together with the last sheet from all registers. (Form based on Holyoke, Mass.) 

1 It is important to know this wherever it is legal, but no community permitting such 
punishment (save in a reform school) can properly consider itself possessed of competent 
teachers and managed in a competent manner. See pp. 301-302. 



APPENDIXES XX AND XXI 405 

APPENDIX XX. — RULES AND REGULA- 
TIONS 

The Anglo-Saxon principle is never to make a law until it is needed. In 
small school systems, the less the number of the various rules and regulations 
that are established by resolution of the board, the better. As necessity arises, 
one and another may be passed, amended, or repealed. 

When revision and codification become desirable (or are ordered by the 
board), the several principles to be followed by the superintendent are as 
follows, namely : — 

1. To have the new rules and regulations as few, as direct, as true to com- 

mon sense and to modern science, and as simple as possible. 

2. To secure, in all educational matters, adequate, formal, public, and legal 

recognition of the authority of the superintendent, the principals, the 
supervisors, and the teachers. 

3. To secure relief for superintendent and teachers, as far as possible, from 

all purely business matters. 

4. To advance the cause of liberal education. 

5. Conversely, to resist all encroachments of the legislative upon the execu- 

tive department, to resist all efforts to make the educators clerks, and 
to resist excessively detailed m.echanization of the school system. 

Many rules and regulations (unless dead letter) in a small school system 
are symptomatic of serious faults. 

APPENDIX XXL — REPORT OF SUSPENSION OF 
A PUPIL TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 

To , Secretary of the Board of Education of the 

of , of the County of : 

Sir — You are hereby notified that I have this day suspended from , 

•' ^ number 

school , for \here state the cause for suspension]. 

Dated this day of , 190 . 



Principal. 

The State school law usually requires eyery suspension to be reported to the board of 
education. A similar notice may go to the parent or guardian. With reform schools and 
ungraded classes, expulsion (outlawing) becomes unnecessary. 



406 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

APPENDIX XXII. — DUTIES OF SECRfeXARY OR 

CLERK 

1. To prepare and deliver notices for meetings of the board of education. 

2. To act as corresponding and recording secretary of the board of education. 

(a) To keep on file all communications as ordered by the board. 

(d) To record, in a book provided for that purpose, all the proceedings 

of board of education meetings and district meetings. 
(c) To write and to receive all correspondence as ordered or in the course 

of the ordinary business of the board. 

3. To keep an account of the school finances of the municipality, and to report 
at each regular meeting of the board of education. 

4. To pay out all moneys by issuing orders on the custodian of school moneys. 

5. To make a financial report to all superior county, state, and national officers. 

6. To make a report of the transactions of the board for the year to the annual 
meeting of the town or of the city council or of the board of school estimate for the 
election of members of the board of education. 

7. To prepare and forward the annual report to the designated superior officer. 

(In some States) 

8. To prepare and post 

Notices for annual district meeting, 
Notices for special district meeting. 

9. To notify State or county superintendent and city or township assessor of the 
amount of district school tax ordered. 

10. To take an inventory annually of all school property. 

11. To take affidavits (without fee) in all matters of school business. 

12. To attest signature of president (or chairman) of the board upon contracts, 
notes, diplomas, etc., and to certify copies of board resolutions, etc. 



APPENDIX XXIIL — FORM FOR NOTICE FOR A 
MEETING OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 

To- : 

You are hereby notified that there will be a meeting of the Board of Education 

of the of , on evening, , 190 — , 

at ^~ o'clock, in the schoolhouse. 

[Dot*.] , 

Secretary »r Clerk, 



APPENDIXES XXIV AND XXV 407 

APPENDIX XXIV. — TEACHER'S CONTRACT 

It is hereby agreed by and between the Board of Education of , in 

the County of and , that said Board of Education, by resolution 

duly passed at a meeting regularly called and constituted, has employed and does 

engage and employ the said to teach in the public 

school, under the control of said Board of Education, for the term of 

year from the day of. , igo... at the salary of $ 

to be paid in equal monthly installments ; that the said shall 

begin teaching on the day of. , 190 ; that the said 

holds a valid grade certificate to teach now in full force and 

effect, or will procure such certificate before the date he shall begin teaching, and 

that the date when said certificate will expire is the day of , 190. _ 

It is hereby agreed that either of said parties to this contract may, at any time, 
terminate said contract and the employment aforesaid, by giving to the other party 
[Aere insert length 0/time] notice in writing of its election to so terminate the same. 

The said hereby accepts the employment aforesaid and undertakes 

that. _ he will fiaithfully do and perform duty under the employment afore- 
said, and will observe and enforce the rules prescribed for the government of the 
School by the Board of Education and the Superintendent, or Principal, or Super- 
vising Principal. 

Dated this day of , 190 



President of the Beard of Education 
of the School District of 
County of 



Teacher, Secretary. 

One copy of the contract is to be filed with the superintendent, one copy with the secre- 
tary or clerk, and one copy retained by the teacher. 

APPENDIX XXV. — AFFIDAVIT TO BILL 
PRESENTED TO A BOARD OF EDUCATION 

State of 



rl 



.County. 



. , of full age, being duly sworn, on his oath saith that 
the goods or services itemized in the annexed bill have been delivered or ren- 
dered ; that no bonus or reward has been given or received by any person or 
persons, within the knowledge of the deponent, in connection with the same ; 
that the same is correct and true ; and that the amount therein stated is justly due 
and owing as set forth. 

Sworn and subscribed before me, "j 
this day of ,190 |- 



408 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

APPENDIX XXVI. — CONTRACT FOR 
BUILDING A SCHOOLHOUSE 

Contract made and entered into between A. B., of the County of , 

State o£ , and "The Board of Education of the of. , 

in the County of ," State of 

In consideration of the sum of one dollar in hand paid, the receipt whereof is 

hereby acknowledged, and of the further sum of dollars, to be paid as 

hereinafter specified, the said A. B. agrees to build a frame schoolhouse and to 
furnish the materials therefor, according to the plans and specifications for the 
erection of said house hereto appended, at such point in said District as the said 
Board may designate. The said house is to be built of the best material, in a sub- 
stantial, workmanlike manner ; and is to be completed and delivered to said 

Board, free from any lien for work done or materials furnished, by the 

day of , 190 ; and in case the said house is not finished in the time 

herein specified, the said A. B. shall forfeit and pay to the said Board, for the use 
of said District, the sum of dollars, and shall also be liable for all dam- 
ages that may result in consequence of such failure, and said Board may finish the 
building and charge the cost of the same to the said A. B. 

The said Board hereby agrees to pay the said A. B. the sum of dol- 
lars when the foundation of said house is finished, and the further sum of 

dollars when the building is ready for the roof; and the remaining sum of 

dollars when the said house is finished and delivered, as herein stipulated. 

It is further agreed, that this contract shall not be sublet, transferred, or assigned 
without the consent of both parties. 

Witness our hands this day of , igo.. 

A. B., Contractor. 
, President. 

, Secretary. 



In building a schoolhouse, it is all-important to secure a plan of the building, with full 
specifications as to its dimensions, style of architecture, number and size of the windows and 
doors, quality of materials to be used ; what kind of roof ; number of coats of paints ; of 
what material the foundation shall be constructed ; its depth below, and its height above the 
surface of the ground ; the number and style of chimneys and flues ; the provisions for venti- 
lation ; the number of coats of plastering, and style of finish, and all other items in detail that 
may be deemed necessary. The plan and specifications should be attached to the contract, and 
the whole filed with the district clerk. Before the building is commenced, the contract and 
specifications should be filed in the office [of the county clerk to prevent liens. All plans 
and specifications must be submitted to the State Board of Education for approval. 

(Based on New Jersey form.) 



APPENDIX XXVII 



409 



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410 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

APPENDIX XXVIII. — FORM OF INQUIRY 
REGARDING CANDIDATE 



.190 



DEAR.. 



. of* is a 

candidate for a teacher's position in the . -..grades of the public 

schools of this city. I understand that you know something of h — qualifications 
for such a position. You will confer a favor, which I shall highly appreciate, if 
you will kindly give me such of your information as will be of assistance to me in 
considering the appointment of this candidate. 
What has been the character and degree of h__ education ? 

Do you think it sufficient for the position in question? _ Has _he taught 

under your direction or supervision ? When ? How long ? 

Did you see much of h — work? What grade or subject 

did_heteach? -__ How many pupils in h — class? From 

your observation do you consider h _ . thoroughly successful as a teacher ? ; 

as a disciplinarian ? Is_he progressive ? . Is_he strong all 

round? Whatish._ strongest point ? ; weakest? 

Is _he now teaching in your school? If so, why does _he wish to 

leave ? Do you desire to retain h__? Is_he under contract 

to remain for any specified time ? , If so, can _he be released ? On 

what notice? 

If _he is not now teaching in your school, why did _he leave ?_^ 

Was -he reappointed ? Did you wish to retain h__? 

Would you like to number h _ _ again among your corps of teachers ? 

Is this candidate's moral character irreproachable ? Do you recommend 

h__ unreservedly? 

Please give any further information on the other side of this sheet. 

Whatever you may write upon this matter will be treated in strict confidence. 
Thanking you for the favor of an early reply, I am, 

Very respectfully yours. 



City Suferinttndtnt. 
Stamped and addressed 

envelope enclosed/or reply. 

(Based upon Passaic Form, F. E. Spaulding, Superintendent.) 



APPENDIXES XXIX AND XXX 



411 



APPENDIX XXIX. — TEACHER'S DAILY PLAN 

This blank is to be filled out and filed on the desk BEFORB beginning the work of the 
day. State WHAT you are to teach, not the number of pages in the book. Note any difficulties 
that arise, and take the first opportunity to consult the Principal, Supervisor, or Superintendent. 

School Grade. Sectioa 190 

I plan to teach this day what is indicated under the following subjects : — 
Reading : 
Language : 
Spelling : 
Arithmetic : 
Nature Study : ) 
Physiology : j 
Geography : 
History : 
Writing : 
Music : 
Drawing: 

Teacher. 

(Passaic form) 



APPENDIX XXX. — POSTAL CARD PUPIL'S 
ABSENCE FORM NOTICE 

PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF 

OFFICE OF THE PRINCIPAL: SCHOOL 

190 

.was absent from school 



Please fill out the line below to show whether the absence was with your per- 
mission, and after signing, send this card to me by the pupil. 

Absence from school, for even a half day, interferes with the progress of the pupil, 
and should not occur except in cases of sickness. Written excuses are required in 
all cases of absence. 

Principal. 

This absence with my permission. 

Signed Parent. 

(East Orange form, V. L. Davey, Superintendent.) 



412 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



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COMPULSORY EDUCATION 

(New Jersey) 
Laws, Session of igoo— Article XV 

154. Every parent, guardian or other 
person having control of a child between 
the ages of seven and twelve years, shall 
send such child to public day school each 
day where such school shall be in session, 
unless such child shall be excused from 
such attendance by the board of education 
of the school district in which such parent 
or guardian shall reside upon its being 
shown to the satisfaction of said board that 
the bodily or mental condition of such 
child \% such as to prevent his or her attend- 
ance at school, or that such child is being 
taught in private school or at home in 
such branches as arc usually taught in pub- 
lic schools to children of his or her age, or 
for other good cause. 

155. No child under the age of fifteen 
years shall be employed by any person, 
company or corporation to labor in any 
business whatever, unless such child shall 
have attended within twelve months imme- 
diately preceding such employment some 
public or private school. Such attendance 
shall be for five days or four evenings every 
week during a period of sixteen weeks, 
which may be divided into two terms of 
eight consecutive weeks each, so far as the 
arrangement of school terms will permit. 

156. In case any parent, guardian or 
other person having control of any child 
shall fail to comply with the provisions of 
this article, such parent, guardian or other 
person shall be deemed guilty of a mis- 
demeanor, and shall, on conviction thereof, 
be liable to a fine of not less than one dollar 
nor more than twenty-five dollars for each 
ofiense, or to imprisonment for not less 
than five days nor more than three months, 
which said fine shall be paid to the cus- 
todian of the school moneys of the school 
district in which the offense shall have oc- 
curred for the use of the public schools 
therein. Such offense shall be prosecuted 
by the board of education of said school 
district before a judge of a city or munici- 
pal court, police justice, or a justice of the 
peace, within whose jurisdiction said school 
district shall be situate. 

[Back of Excuse] 



APPENDIX XXII 



413 



APPENDIX XXXIL — EYE AND EAR RECORDS 

SIGHT AND HEARING RECORDS 

Name Sight and Hearing 



Ears 


Date 


Eyes 


Date 




Right 


Left 


Right 


Left 


Recordkr 

















Details and Miscellaneous Physical Records 



PupiL-_ 
Teacher- 



Date. 



NOTIFICATION CARD 



.190--. 



Mr- 



Dear 

I have carefully examined your child 

eyes and ears and am of the opinion that there is a 

defect of vision-hearing. I am therefore required, by direction of the Board of 
Education, to advise you to consult an Eye- Ear Doctor of good reputation, in order 
that your child's progress in education may not be unduly retarded. 

Respectfully, 

Endorsed by 

Supervisor of Physical Training: 



Principal of School No. 



Superintendent of Schools. 



414 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



APPENDIX XXXIIL — TRANSFER CARD 



To Principal School No.. 

, is hereby transferred to 

School No. ^--from School No. 



Conduct — 
Grade here. 
Remarks — 
School No.. 



-last average was. 

(Date) 

Last Teacher 

Grade recommended . 



Date. 



Principal, 

APPENDIX XXXIV. — REQUISITION FOR 

SUPPLIES 



Date. 



ORIGINAL No.. 

For School Grade. 



Requisition.. 



Signature of Principal. _. 
Or Signature of Teacher. 



DUPLICATE 
Date For School. 



Requisition. 



No.. 

Grade. 



Signature of Principal _.. 
Or Signature of Teacher. 



APPENDIX XXXV 415 

APPENDIX XXXV. — APPLICATION FORM FOR 

CANDIDATE 

PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



Date Name 

Year of birth -Address 

Birthplace Home address 

Father's birthplace Salary received now 

Mother's birthplace Salary desired 

No. of children in parents' family Height .Weight 

Childhood spent in city or town, or on farm 

Father's present or former profession or occupation 

High School or Academy attended 

What course was completed? Whatyear?- 

Normal School or College attended 

What course was completed? What year?. 

Post graduate study 

Professional certificates held 

Do you believe in educational progress ? 

Travel 

Music Do you sing ? 

Art 

Manual Training 

Physical Training 

Foreign Languages spoken 

Experience in teaching 



References, I, 

2 

3 

Kind of position desired 

Explanatory or additional remarks. 



Photograph Interview. 

School visited by. 

When available 

Return to Superintendent of Schools. 



4i6 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



APPENDIX XXXVI. — MONTHLY LESSON AND 
ATTENDANCE REPORTS OF TEACHERS 



-PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



Teacher's 

Signature 

No. of days absent 

Give days and causes. 

Substitutes. 

Times of arrival and departure from School 



Grade School. 

Month ending 



Mon. A.M.- 
Mon. P.M.- 



Tues. A.M.- 
Tues. P.M.. 



Wed. A.M.- 
Wed. P.M.- 



Special Note as to Saturday if at School. 



Thurs. A.M.- 
Thurs. P.M.. 

Mon. A.M.__ 
Mon. P.M._- 



Fri. A.M.-. 
Fri. P.M.- 

Tues. A.M. 
Tues. P.M. 



Wed. A.M. 

Wed. P.M. 

Special Note as to Saturday if at School. 



Thurs. A.M. 
Thurs. P.M. 
Mon. A.M.- 
Mon. P.M.-. 



Fri. A.M.-- 
Fri. P.M.-- 
Tues. A.M.. 
Tues. P.M.. 



Wed. A.M. 

Wed. P.M. 

Special Note as to Saturday if at School. 

Thurs. A.M Fri. A.M 

Thurs. P.M. Fri. P.M 

Mon. A.M Tues.A.M. Wed. A.M. 

Mon. P.M Tues. P.M Wed. p.M 

Special Note as to Saturday if at School. 

Thurs. A.M. Fri. A.M 

Thurs. P.M Fri. P.M 

Educational meetings attended during the month : 
Educational books or periodicals read during month : 
Criticisms or suggestions regarding meetings or books : 

Record here the PAGES assigned in the various text-books, TOPICS of importance treated 
during the month, any educational matters deserving notice, and any OPINIONS you may 
wish to refer to the Superintendent of Schools. 

Do not write on the back or within one inch of the left edge. Use a second sheet if neces- 
sary, but not more than two sheets. 

Comments by Principal : 

Principal's signature : 

This report should reach the Superintendent from the Principal, every fourth Monday by 

3 '-M. 

[This is to be printed upon one side of a wide sheet of paper]. 



APPENDIX XXXVII 



417 



APPENDIX XXXVIL — SEMI-ANNUAL RATING 
FORM OF TEACHERS 



Date- 



Grade . 



Name School No. 

Teacher Principal Supervisor Specialist Subjects 

Certificate held 

Date of Appointment Salary this date 

Graduate 

Marks: A, admirable. E, excellent. V. G., very good. G, good. F, fair. T, toler- 
able. P, poor. V. P., very poor. C, complete failure. O, no preparation whatever. 
H, highly commendable. S, satisfactory. D, deficient. I, improving, 

V. G. is the highest mark given until the fourth half year here, and G. the highest until the 
second. X, no opinion. Z, opinion unnecessary. 

Instructing 

Methods 

Questioning 

Blackboard 

Results 

Controlling 

Self-control 

Class control 

Methods 

Educating 

Tact . Scientific knowledge of children 

Executive qualities General scholarship and culture 

Disposition and character Apparent native ability 

Special strength 

Special weakness 

Specialties : 

Drawing Physical Culture- 



Voice 

Manner 

Handwriting 

Fitness in scholarship for position 



Willingness to receive suggestions 
Ability to carry out suggestions 
Ability to see what is going on 



Music 

Remarks : 



Total rating- 



Signed. 



Position. 



Every rating is with reference exclusively to the position now held. A duplicate is to be 
kept on file. The original may or may not be seen by the teacher at his option. 
Illustration : Manner, F, I, means fair but improving. 



4l8 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

APPENDIX XXXVIIL — ORDER ON CUSTODIAN 
OF SCHOOL MONEYS FOR TEACHERS' 
SALARIES 

No. , N.J., — , , 190. 

To , Custodian of School Moneys of the School District of — 

County of , State of New Jersey: 

Pay to the order of , Teacher, dollars, being the amount of 

salary due for teaching in Public School No. , of said School District 

of , from , 190 — to , 190 — . 



., President > Board of Education of the 
., Secretary ) School District oL 



I hereby certify that the Teacher in whose favor this order is drawn, is in pos- 
session of a Teacher's Certificate, in full force and effect, and has properly kept the 
School Register, as required by law, and that I have certified thereto in said Register. 



.Secretary, 



APPENDIX XXXIX.— FORM OF NOTE FOR 
MONEY BORROWED 

, N.J., , X90 — 

days after date, "The Board of Education of the of , 

in the County of ," State of New Jersey, promises to pay to , or 

order, dollars, with interest from the date thereof, at the rate of. per 

cent per annum. 

This note is given for money borrowed by said Board for the purpose of- — , 

pursuant to the statute entitled " An act to establish a system of public instruction," 
approved March 26th, 1902, and by the consent of the inhabitants of the said district 
lawfully given, at a meeting lawfully held on , — , 190 — 

. ._ -.-- .-- .- .President, 

Attest: 

.District Qerk, 



APPENDIXES XL AND XLII 419 

APPENDIX XL. — CERTIFICATE THAT CHILD 
HAS ATTENDED SCHOOL 

I hereby certify that I am Principal of School No. .-_, in the of 

, [city, town, county] of , and that \name 0/ child] is the [son, 

daughter, or ward] of [name 0/ parent or guardian], residing at [street and city] ; 

that to the best of knowledge and belief, said [name 0/ child] is years of 

age ; and said [name of child] has attended school under my charge, five days a 
week, for weeks, during the year preceding the date of this certificate. 

Dated , 190 — 



APPENDIX XLL — REGISTRATION CARDS 

PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOL 

(admission card for the student) 

Name , 

Address 

Age Date of entry- 

Studies Rooms 



PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOL 

(for the teacher) 



Name .. 

Address 

Age Date of entry--^ 

Studies — Rooms- 
Grades 

Remarks 



Attended school 

L evening- 



jday- 



420 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



Name 



APPENDIX XLIL — PUPIL'S RECORD 

(index card for filing) 



Father's name, if living 


Occupation 


Mother's name, if living 


No. of children in family 


Residence 


Residence 


Date of first entrance 


Date of leaving school 


Date of birth 


Place of birth 


Initials of teachers who have had 


charge of pupil, with dates and grades 


Same 


Same 


Consult records as indicated 



APPENDIX XLIII. — RECORD OF BOOKS 

(index card) 



Name of book 


Total number 


Author's name 


Left in school 


Teacher 


Number 


Teacher 


Number 











APPENDIXES XLIV AND XLV 42 1 

APPENDIX XLIV. — TEACHER'S RECORD FORM 

(index card) 

Name School 

Date of appointment Grade 

Education with dates 

Same 

Experience elsewhere 

Experience here 



APPENDIX XLV.— PUPIL'S PINK (OR BLUE) MIS- 
CONDUCT AND SPECIAL REPORT FORM 

(index card) 
Name 

Special reports 



It is suggested that forms be given teachers, to be filled out for sending disorderly pupils 
to the office of the principal or, where there is no principal, to the superintendent. The 
written record may be valuable later, even if not necessary at the time. 



422 



ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 







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APPENDIX XLVII 

POSTAL CARD FORM OF ATTENDANCE AND SERVICE 
OF SUBSTITUTE TEACHER 



Date. 



Superintendent. 



Dear Sir: — 

I have taught to-day the class of grade. 

school 

Very truly yours, 



Certified by_ 



Principal school 

(To be mailed at close of afternoon session.) 



424 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 



APPENDIX XLVIII. — THE LONG VACATION 

Many a school superintendent traces defeats more or less serious to 
absence from the city when board or committee meetings have been 
held. The safe rule is, Always attend board and committee meetings^ 
regular or special^ both in the school year and in vacation. An exception 
is, Never attend when ill or excessively fatigued. A conclusion is, Take 
vacations at opportune times and never for very long at a time. The 
man who must have two months' solid vacation every summer is physi- 
cally unfitted for the superintendency. Another conclusion is, Never get 
into a condition to need a long vacation. It is usually best to take a few 
days' rest while the schools are in session so as to be fully ready for the 
heavy work of closing a term or a year. To one already somewhat weary, 
that added labor results in over-fatigue. In the summer, most men of the 
nervous vigor required in a school superintendent get more real rest and 
recreation in a stay of two weeks in a remote place entirely out of the 
reach of the mail, the telegraph, and the telephone, than in two months 
out of town but attending to correspondence. 

Engaging in business employments in the vacation destroys the 
public illusion that the school superintendent is a professional man. 
Educationally and physically, the best vacation is found in a variety 
of physical and intellectual employments without direct financial or 
professional returns. In most communities, a competent superintendent 
sees enough work to do to be kept reasonably busy a part of every day 
for six or seven weeks of the long vacation. The summer school for 
the children of the city has recently returned, bringing a new, though 
not very exacting, interest. 

A school superintendent does well every three or four years to attend 
a regular course for teachers. The vacation school for instruction and 
conference is a very valuable influence in American education. While 
the teachers' institute for the stimulation of persons who, in general, 
are essentially unfit for their positions is a confession of the farcical 
nature of much so-called education, the professional summer school, 
conducted by experts for serious practitioners and students of educa- 
tion, is an institution worthy of an occupation that is slowly but surely 
coming to rank with the "learned professions," law, theology, and 
medicine. 



APPENDIXES XLIX AND L 425 

APPENDIX XLIX. — RELATION WITH THE 
PAROCHIAL SCHOOL 

The public school has a universal mission. Because it must be un- 
denominational and non-sectarian, it is held by some to be irreligious. 
While the ideal method might be for the State to grant subsidies to all 
schools whose teachers possess legal certificates of attainments, whose 
courses of study are approved and regularly supervised by State educa- 
tional officers, and whose attendance of pupils is systematically regis- 
tered, at present all persons who believe that religion is the true and 
only foundation of education must be content with maintaining, be- 
tween the public and all parochial schools, relations at once amicable 
and equitable. In particular, pupils coming from parochial or other 
schools of a primarily religious character should be taken at the face 
value of their transfer records. For at least a year afterwards they 
should be tested solely with reference to their power to maintain their 
class standing, and not in the least with reference to their demonstrable 
attainments. This is a sound general principle of education, — Can the 
pupil do the work ? If there is any reasonable hope that he can, he 
should be tried until the contrary is proven. 

In this connection, it may be said that, while irreproachable morals 
are the sine qua non of professional fitness in the teacher, religious faith 
and denominational connections should never be considered in the 
question of the employment of a teacher in any public school. 

APPENDIX L. — LISTING AND PURCHASE OF 
TEXT-BOOKS AND SUPPLIES 

1 . The quality of all articles supplied should equal that of the sample 
upon which the order was based. 

2. A count of pages should be made of all notebooks and stationery 
pads unless purchased by weight. In the latter case, this should be 
verified, when possible. 

3. Irrespective of the number of articles, whether large or small, an 
accurate count should always be made. 

4. In opening packages of miscellaneous supplies, articles should be 
immediately checked off upon the bill. 



426 ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION 

5. In all bids, note whether expressage (or freightage) be included. 

6. Make all claims for errors immediately. 

7. In discussing text-books, consider (a) quality of the text; 
(d) number of pages of printed matter; (c) number and quality of 
illustrations; (d) quality of binding; (e) date of writing or of last 
revision; (/) success elsewhere. 

8. In small school systems, it is usually better to base the syllabus 
of the course of study upon a satisfactory text-book rather than to try 
to find a text-book that fits the course. 

9. Never make a change in a text-book unless the reasons for it 
are sufficient to convince both the local educators and intelligent lay- 
men that the new text proposed is considerably better than the old. 

10. It is a suspicious circumstance when all purchases are made of 
but a few concerns ; also, when the heavy accounts are with the smaller 
competitive concerns ; also, when publicity in all financial matters is not 
customary. 

11. All bids should be opened and all bills ordered paid in ^<open 
meetings " of the board. 

12. All honest men desire to have their accounts inquired into and 
systematically audited. 

13. Poor teachers need good text-books and supplies, good teachers 
demand them. 

14. The personal quality of the agent may help a sale but cannot 
assist the success of book or apparatus in actual classroom use. 

15. The responsible and permanent business house has these claims 
for preference; namely, that errors are cheerfully rectified, that small 
additional supplies of the same standard can be bought from year to 
year, that accounts may be carried in seasons of emergency for con- 
siderable periods ; and that their methods are honorable, as their dura- 
tion and success testify. 



INDEX 



Prepared by Samuel H. Dodson, Pd. M., Instructor in history, Bloomfield High School, 
and lecturer in history, New York Board of Education free lectures. 



Absence, form of notice for, 411 ; form 
of excuse for, 412. 

Acton, Lord, quotation from, 145. 

Administrator, the superintendent as an, 
89-99; the principal as an, 99-103; 
the teacher as an, 259-260. 

Administration, of schools, principles 
governing, 72-103; by the board of 
education, 72-89 ; by the superintend- 
ent, 89-99 ; by the principal, 99-103 ; 
the nature of, 105-106; a strong su- 
perintendent of, when subordinate to 
one strong in supervision, 131. 

Affairs, of the board, 72-89; of the 
superintendent, 89-99 J o^ t^® princi- 
pal, 99-103. 

Agencies, teachers', 327. 

Age, of candidate, 335; of pupils in 
grades, 371. 

Alumni, of the high school, and the 
principal, 189 ; of colleges, 320. 

America, free common education, gov- 
erning board of, 2-3 ; meaning of, 3 ; 
free public schools in, 226-228 ; pri- 
vate schools in, 246-256. 

Applicant, the, 324. 

Application, form of, 415. 

Appreciation, of teachers, by the public, 
119-121. 

Arnold, Matthew, quotation from, 309. 

Attendance, compulsory, 300-302; rec- 
ord, 401 ; certificate of, 419. 

Authority, in school affairs, tendency 
of, 8 ; of board members and superin- 
tendent, 8-9, 11-12. 

Batavia plan (or Pueblo, Colo., plan 
revived) of grading pupils, 235 (foot- 
note). 



Bill, affidavit to, 407. 

Biology, the study of, its need, 316; a 
conclusion from, educationally con- 
sidered, 316 (footnote). 

Board of education, control of schools, 
2-3, 36 ; when members of, are paid, 
36-37 ; organization of, 42 ; in select- 
ing a superintendent, iii; increase 
of authority of, 8-9 ; authority of a 
member of, 11-12 ; qualifications of a 
member of, 12-17 '» selection of mem- 
bers of, 18-22; appointment of, by 
mayor, 22-25; election at large of, 
25-27; term of, 28; size of, 30-33; 
committees of, 42-47 ; a poor member 
of, 60-67, ^^^ how to manage him, 
62; and free text-books, 71-72 ; meet- 
ings of, 72-74 ; order of proceedings, 
74-75 ; decisions of, 75-76 ; policy of, 
to be public, 80 ; in purchases of land, 
etc, future needs to be considered, 
81-83; reports of, 87-88; economy 
of, 88-89; ^nd the school principals, 
101-102; and the superintendent, 
149- 151; State, 238; and the new 
education, 279 ; and the community, 
297-298. 

Board of examiners, for teachers, 6-7; 
duties of, 7; appointment of, 70-71; 
State, 238. 

Board of health, compared with board 
of education, 337. 

Board of school estimate, how made up, 
41 ; its advantages, 41-42. 

Bo2U:ding school, and day school, pri- 
vate, 247 ; management of, 250-252. 

Bonded indebtedness, for school im- 
provements, 83-85. 

Books, yearly allowances for, 383. 



427 



428 



INDEX 



Boys and girls in high school, the stud- 
ies and management of, 190-191; 
physical effect of school work upon, 
274. 

Bribery, in large boards of education, 

35- 
Bureau of education, of the United 

States, and local schools, 8. 
Business, or occupation, the motive of, 

I ; spirit of, 340. 

Candidate, the, 323 et seq. ; under trying 
circumstances, 333 ; selection of, 335 
et seq.\ form of inquiry, 410; appli- 
cation, 415. 

Capitalism, forces of, tendency in, 108 ; 
and labor, warfare of, 109; control 
in America, 373, 394. 

Centralization, tendency toward, in 
school management, 237. 

Certificate, 341, 368, 369, 

Character, the goal of, 310. 

Child study, and private schools, 250 ; 
works on, 261 (footnote) ; and 
teachers, 266-268. 

Church, The, its religious motive, i ; and 
school, aims of, different, 2; as a 
universal institution, 145. 

City, school system in, 3-4; an elective 
board of education in a large, 26 ; in 
a middle-sized, 26; an appointive 
board in, 27 ; and the district schools, 

243-245. 

Civilization, and the division of labor, 
130-131; complexity of, 222; and 
the new education, 279-283; law of, 
338. 

Clergy, and the schools, 291-292. 

Clerk, to superintendent, duties, 94. 

Committee, work of, in board of educa- 
tion, 34; number of, 45; duties of, 
45-46 ; to select candidates, 336. 

Community the, educational policy of, 
284-302; different kinds of, 288; the 
wealth per capita in, 296. 

Competition, 340. 

Compulsory attendance, 300-302. 

Contract, with teachers, 407 ; for school- 
house, 408. 

Corporal punishment, 271-272. 



Cost of education for teaching, 373. 
County superintendent, appointed by 

State board of education, 238. 
Courage, value of, in administration, 93. 
Course of study, and teachers, 258-259 ; 

and the new education, 275-283. 
Culture, and the school, 217 ; in relation 

to size of families, 339. 

Day school, and boarding school, pri- 
vate, 247; difference in management 
of, 250-252. 

Debt, running into, by superintendent, 
142-143. 

Decisions, of board of education, to be 
recorded, 75-76. 

Democracy, purpose of, in establishing 
boards of education, 53 ; its present 
trend, 106-107 ; and the schools, 218- 
221 ; and scholarship, 220-221 ; its 
rulers and servants, 311. 

Departmental instruction, in elemen- 
tary schools, 271. 

Departments, in a typical school sys- 
tem, 7. 

Diary, official, of superintendent, 174. 

Discipline, and the principalship, 188; 
in high school, 190-191 ; in grammar 
school, 192; and environment, 193 
(footnote) ; in private schools, 246, 
250-252; no subject studied alone 
for, 319. 

Dishonest men, on boards of education, 
60-61. 

District school, and the State system, 
237-245; relation to State system, 
239; pupils in, 240; meaning of, 
241 ; work of, 241-243 ; supervision 
of, 245. 

Duties, of the superintendent, 137; gen- 
eral, 149-173 ; specific, 173-174. 

Economic occupations, classes of, 294- 

295. 
Economics, and private schools, 253-254 ; 

and other institutions, 254-255 ; the 

study/ of, the need of, 317-318. 
Economy, in expenditures, by board of 

education, 88-89. 
Educational affairs, and finances, line 



INDEX 



429 



of demarcation between, 9-10; ten- 
dency of, in supervisory duties, 
iio-iii; and the community, 285- 
302. 

Education, its modem feature, i; unit 
of, 2-3; its importance, failure of 
public to understand, 128-129; is 
universal, 184; its meaning, 220; 
average cost of, for a pupil, 296 ; for 
supervision, 303-321; goal of, 307- 
310 ; expenditures for, in the United 
States, 313-314. 

Election, 322 et seq. 

Elections, in high school, 384. 

Elementary school, principalship, man 
or woman, 183; and high school, 
183-184; subject-matter in, 185-187; 
departmental instruction in, 271. 

Endowed schools, private and public, 
252 ; principal of private, 254-255. 

Enemies of the schools, and the superin- 
tendent, 299-300. 

Evening schools, 197-200. 

Evolution, of principals, supervisors, and 
superintendents, 130-13 1. 

Examiners, board of, 6-7; how consti- 
tuted, 70-71 ; State, 238. 

Executive sessions, of board of educa- 
tion, 76. 

Expenditures, national, 360. 

Eye and ear records, 413. 

Farmers, and education, 295. 

Fathers, American, and the education 
of their children, 292. 

Failure, remedies for, 346. 

Family, motive of, i ; in relation to cul- 
ture, 339. 

Finances, provisions for raising, 5-6: 
and educational affairs, line of de- 
marcation between, 9-10; monthly 
report of educational, 396. 

Foresight, in school administration, 92; 
and supervision, 114-115. 

Freedom, of teacher, nature and value 
of, 257-259. 

Free institutions, and public intelli- 
gence, 107. 

Free public school, need and purpose 
of, 217-225. 



Girls and boys in high school, the 

studies and management of, 190-191, 
Good schools, order of growth of, 104- 

105 ; the hope of, in America, in. 
Government, motive of, i; of the 

schools, in whom rests, 149; and 

property, 157-158. 
Graded public school, 217-236; records 

of, 235. 
Graduates, of high schools, 191. 
Grammar school, principalship of, man 

or woman, 183; age of pupils in, 

184; subject-matter in, 185-187. 

Hall, G. Stanley, quotation from, copy- 
right page. 

Health, importance of, 330; education 
and, 338. 

High school, principalship of, man or 
woman, 183; and elementary, 183- 
184; subject-matter in, 186-187; 
scholarship of a principal of, 187-188 ; 
and the superintendent, 189-190 ; and 
the alumni, 189; and the colleges, 
191. 

History, the study of, the need of, 317. 

Home, purchase of, by superintendent, 
147; rests upon love, 217. 

Humanity, teachers' duty to, 118 ; under- 
standing of the good and bad of, by 
teachers, value of, 128. 

Human nature, the teacher a student of, 
128. 

Ideal man, qualities of, 310, 

Ideals, in supervision, 113-114; and lit- 
erature, 115; creation of, through 
leisure, 132; the old and the new, 
concerning man, 222. 

Ignorant men, as board members, 61-63. 

Immoral or unmoral men, as board 
members, 63. 

Indebtedness, power of committee to 
incur, 77 ; to provide for payment of, 
83-85 ; bonded, 83-85. 

Inequality, of human beings, 312-313. 

Influence, of supervisor, through author- 
ity and personality, 126. 

Interviews, the candidate and the school 
board, 325. 



430 



INDEX 



Issues, trying too many at a time, by the 
superintendent, 148. 

Janitors, selection of, 67; qualities of, 
67-68; and the superintendent, 156- 
157; salaries of, 315. 

Jesus, as a teacher, 57; as the ideal 
man, 310. 

Kindergartens, 193. 

" Know thyself," and education, 308. 

Labor, forces of, tendency in, 108 ; and 
capitalism, warfare of, 109. 

Law, knowledge of, by superintendent, 
136; of civilization, 338. 

Learner, The, and the teacher, 217. 

Legislative usurpation, in the public 
schools, 240. 

Leisure, meaning and need of, by super- 
intendent and teachers, 132; and 
ideals, 132. 

Lesson reports, teachers', 416. 

Letters, to board members, 325-326. 

Liberty, 369. 

Libraries, school, 376; teachers', 377- 

379- 
Life, modern, its characteristic feature, i. 
Listing books, 426. 
Lowell, quotation from, iv, 130; 321. 

Madison, James, quotation from, 240. 

Management, school, its point of view, 2. 

Manual training, 193 (footnote) ; school, 
201-202; State appropriation for, 
239 ; need of, 283, 308. 

Marks, gradation, in the school, 235, 
report of, 397. 

Mayor, appointment of members of 
board of education by, 22-25; ^^' 
thority of, 27-28. 

Medical supervisor, of schools, 212-214. 

Meetings, of the board of education, 
when held, 72-74 ; order of proceed- 
ings, 74-75; minutes of the, 75; of 
teachers, 169-173, 262-263; form of 
notice of board, 406. 

Memory, value of, in administration, 
90. 

Men, as principals, 181-183; inequality 



of, 312-313; the, world needs, 315; 
and the studies by which they may be 
prepared, 316-321. 
Method, value of, in administration, 92- 

93. 

Modem society, general nature of, 108- 
109. 

Modem life, its distinguishing element, x. 

Money, limits on expenditure of, by 
committees between board meetings 
without contracts, 76-77; expendi- 
tures, how proportioned, 88-89. 

Mothers, interest of, in the schools, 292- 
293 ; clubs, 293 (footnote) . 

New education. The, and the course of 
study, 275-283. 

Newspaper men, and the superintend- 
ent, 162-164. 

Normal school, its place and purpose in 
education, 108 ; practice work in the, 
179 ; and the high school, 191 ; princi- 
palship and principles of administra- 
tion of, 203-205. 

Note, form of, for money borrowed, 418. 

Occupations, economic, 294. 

Official positions, in school work, rank 

of, 270-271. 
Omniscient or "know it all" men, as 

board members, 65-67. 
Opponents, the, of the schools and the 

superintendent, 299-300. 
Order, form for salaries of teachers, 418 ; 

form for books, etc., 422-423. 

Parents, and school principals, loo-ioi ; 
and teachers, 109; visits of, value of, 
120-121; and the superintendent, 
155-156; and private schools, 251. 

Parliamentary rules, 380-382. 

Parochial schools, 426. 

Pay schools, change of, to free schools, 
position of teachers, 54. 

People, The, and the superintendent, 
118 ; and the schools, 119. 

Perils, of the superintendent, 137-149, 

Personality, meaning and value of, 125 ; 
of superintendent, 334. 

Personal equation, of teachers, 125-126. 



INDEX 



431 



Philosophy, contribution of, to super- 
vision, 115. 

Physical culture, need of, 283 ; 308. 

Physiology, the study of, its need, 316. 

Plans, teacher's daily, 411. 

Plato, quotation from, 159. 

Political science, the study of, need of, 
318. 

Politicians, as board members, 64-65; 
and the superintendent, 159-162, 
291, 299. 

Politics, in school management, 17; in 
appointment of teachers, 50-52; and 
the superintendent, 159-162; the 
scholar in, 320-321. 

Poverty, and the school, 235-236; its 
meaning, 253, 356. 

Pratt, Charles, quotation from, 148. 

Prejudice, in supervision, 125. 

Principal, of a school, as an adminis- 
trator, 99-103 ; as a supervisor, need 
and work of, 122-123 '< ^^^ the super- 
intendent, 151-152; reports of, 152; 
a school with and without a, a finan- 
cial comparison, 180; hours of, at 
school, 195. 

Principles, of administration, 88-99; 
governing private schools, 248-250. 

Principalship, The, 176-205; good, 
features of, 176-177; classes of, 177; 
supervising, 179-180 ; teaching, 181 ; 
and discipline, 188 ; and the superin- 
tendent, 194-195; of local training 
school, 197 ; of evening school, 197- 
200; of reform school, 200-201; of 
primary school, 202-203 ; of normal 
school, 203-205. 

Priyate schools, 246-256 ; meaning and 
classes of, 246-247 ; when better than 
public schools, and why, 247-248; 
principles governing proprietor of, 
248-250; and discipline, 247; 250- 
252; and parents, 251; endowed, 
252; economic phase of, 253; prin- 
cipal of, 254-255; demand for, 255- 
256. 

Program, of school, principles govern- 
ing, 259-260, specimen, 386 it seq. 

Progress, in schools, when made, 105, 
124 ; and change, 235. 



Property, and the government, 157-158 ; 
and private institutions, 253-255. 

Proprietor, of private school, principles 
governing, 248-250 ; and child study, 
250; and pupils, 250-251; and par- 
ents, 251. 

Psychologist, as a supervisor, 215-216. 

Psychology, contribution of, to super- 
vision, 115; the study of, its need, 
316-317. 

Public school, graded, 217-236. 

Pupils, work and conduct of, effects of 
parents' visits upon, 120-121 ; and 
the superintendent, 154 ; and the prin- 
cipal, 188-189; and private schools, 
247; 250-251. 

Quotations, from Lowell, iv, 130, 321; 
from Tennyson, 132; from Lord 
Acton, 145 ; from Charles Pratt, 148 ; 
from Plato, 159; from James Madi- 
son, 240; from James Wilson, 240; 
from Judge Story, 240 ; from Matthew 
Arnold, 309. 

Rating forms, for teachers, 417. 

Records, kept by the superintendent, 
173-174 ; by supervisors, 234 ; forms, 
409, 413 ; index card, 420-421. 

References, educational, 327. 

Reform schools, 271-272. 

Reform, educational, 367. 

Reformers, and the superintendent, 
166-167; the superintendent as a, 
288-289. 

Registration, of pupils, 419. 

Regular meetings, of board of educa- 
tion, 72; time of, 73-74 ; proceedings 
of. 74-75; minutes of, 75. 

Religion, not the basis of education, 2 ; 
contribution of, to supervision, 115; 
in selecting teachers, 128. 

Reports, of board of education, to be 
published, 87-88 ; of superintendent, 
119; of supervisors, 151; of princi- 
pals, 152; of supervisors to superin- 
tendent, 235. 

Reports, school, for pupils, 397-401, of 
educational employees, 402-404. 

Responsibility, in board of education, 



432 



INDEX 



34 ; of members of board, 8i ; of the 
superintendent, 286-288. 
Resignation, of position, 327 ; principles, 

395- 
Revolution, in change of schools, danger 

of, 289-290. 

Rules and regulations, 405. 

Salaries, average, 323, 340; maximum, 
345, of teachers, 344; minimum, 345. 

Salaries, 340, 366 ; minimum, 345 ; maxi- 
mum, 345 ; source of, 349 ; the average 
teacher's, 353 ; need of increased, 353 ; 
ideal, 359 ; economic principles, 374. 

Scholarship, of a supervisor, 129-130; 
of a supervisor in his relations with 
pupils, 130 ; and with the schools, 130 ; 
of a high school principal, 187-188 ; 
and democracy, 220-221. 

School, the, motive in, i ; purpose of, 1 ; 
management of, its point of view, 2 ; 
governing board of, 2-3; financial 
support of, 5-6 ; for whom instituted, 
107 ; reflects the teacher, 117 ; of New 
Jersey, largely supported by the State, 
158; house, 227-228; the basis for 
judging of, 229-233 ; gradation marks, 
235 ; special, 301 ; and culture, 307. 

School system, elements of, 3 ; a typical, 
4; departments in a, 7. 

Secretary, duties of board, 406. 

Self-consciousness, and education, 308. 

Self-control, and education, 308-309. 

Self-culture, the motive of, i. 

Self-direction, and education, 308-309. 

Self-government, in school, 319-320. 

Self-revelation, and education, 308-309. 

Seminars, professional, for teachers, 
169-173, 262-263. 

Social atmosphere, influences of, 284- 
286. 

Social control, and education, 309-310 ; 

315. 
Social institutions, names and motives 

of, i; 290-291. 
Social life, of teachers, need of, 263-264. 
Social service, education for, 315. 
Society, modern, general nature of, 108- 

109; early state of, 130; complexity 

of modern, 130-131 ; progress of, 217 ; 



classes of people in, and the superin- 
tendent, 290-291. 

Sociologist, as a supervisor, 2x5-216. 

Sociology, the study of, the need of, 317. 

Socrates, 57. 

Special meetings, of board of educa- 
tion, 73. 

Special schools, 301. 

State, the, and the school, 7 ; legislation 
and legal decisions of, in relation to 
the school, board of education, 7; 
superintendent and appeals, 135 ; sys- 
tem, and the district school, 237-245; 
system, a scheme, 238-240; board of 
education, and superintendent, 238. 

Story, Judge, quotation from, 240. 

Studies, post graduate, 329. 

Subject-matter, in public schools, 185- 
187; in evening schools, 199-200; list 
of, in schools to-day, 275-277 ; deca- 
dent, 277-278 ; standard, 278 ; needed 
for the development of the right quali- 
ties in man, 316-321. 

Substitute, service of, form, 423. 

Superintendency, complexity of, 149-175. 

Superintendent, 3 ; relation to board of 
education, 8-10, 17-18 ; term of office, 
29-30 ; to appoint teachers, 49-56 ; the 
failure of a, its marks, 59-60; in- 
fluence in board of education of, 69 ; 
and politics, 69-70 ; as an administra- 
tor, 89-99 ; as a teacher, 109-no; and 
the board of education, 118-119; 
and the people, 119-121 ; to help the 
teacher, 122-123 ; and the selection of 
teachers, 126-127; ^s chief super- 
visor, 131 ; as representative of the 
schools, 133; a day's work of, in a 
small city, 134-135; and the State, 
135 ; duties of, 137 ; perils of the, 137- 
149 ; debt of, 142-143 ; and the church, 
145; complex duties of, (1) with 
board of education, 149-150, (2) 
with supervisors, 150-151, (3) with 
principals, 151-152, (4) with teachers, 
153-154. (S) with parents, 155-156, 
(6) with pupils, 154, (7) other duties, 
156-175; and the new education, 
279 ; home environments of the, 284- 
286; as a reformer of the school, 



INDEX 



433 



288-290 ; influence of, upon the peo- 
ple, 297 ; publication of the reports of 
the, 298-299; education of the, for 
supervision, 303-321 ; and the world 
of affairs, 306-307. 

Supervision, of schools, by superin- 
tendent, its character, 105-106, 108, 
112-116; is to bring the people to 
appreciate value of schools, 120-121 ; 
to help the teacher, 122-123 ; when 
hurtful, 122-123 ; as a mode of reliev- 
ing teachers, 124; in organizing the 
schools, 124-125; force in a typical 
school system, 129; a strong superin- 
tendent of, when preferable to one of 
administration, 131 ; in district school, 
245 ; education for, 303-321 ; subjects 
needed in the training for, 316-321. 

Supervising principal, need of, 122-123. 

Supervisor, the superintendent as a, and 
the people, 119; qualities needed by 
a, 125-126; the teacher as a, 261. 

Supervisors, of special subjects, 4; 
qualities needed by, 125-126; num- 
ber of, in proportion to teachers, 
129 ; and the superintendent, 150-15 1 ; 
reports of, 151 ; reason for, 206-207 ; 
duties of, 208-209 ; ^^T^ and women 
as, 210-21 1 ; salaries of, 212 ; medical, 
212-214; sociologist as, 215-216; 
psychologist as, 215-216; visits and 
tests by the, 233-234 ; records of, 234 ; 
reports of, 235. 

Supervisorship, the, 206-216; reasons 
for, 206-207 ; work of, 208-209 ; weak- 
ness of, 209-210; men or women in, 
210-211; salaries, 212. 

Supplies, 383 ; requisition for, 414 ; care 
in purchase of, 427. 

Suspension, of pupil, form for, 405. 

Taxes, for schools, 38-40 ; for new build- 
ings, 83; State, 239; principles of, 

394. 

Taxpayers, and the superintendent, 157 ; 
standing of, 158 ; and the schools, 159. 

Teachers, classes and rank of, 3-4; 
authority of State in employment of, 
8 ; and board members, 8 ; and the 
" school trustee," 47; appointment of. 



48-56 ; licenses of, granted by board 
of examiners, 70; and the principal, 
loi; responsibility of, to the public, 
116-117; and board of education, 
118 ; public appreciation of, 119-121 ; 
hardships of, 119-120; effects upon, 
of working with immature minds, 
120; helping, 122-123; value of local, 
126 ; of imported, 126 ; guiding prin- 
ciples in selection of, 127-128; and 
the superintendent, 153-154 ; a politi- 
cal creature, 160; meetings, 169-173; 
State appropriation for, 239 ; in dis- 
trict schools, 242-245; in private 
schools, 248-250; the functions of, 
257 ; reports of, 257-258 ; freedom of, 
257-259; and course of study, 258- 
259; as administrators, 259-260; as 
supervisors, 261-266 ; study and prog- 
ress of, 264-268; visits of, to other 
schools, 265; and child study, 266- 
267 ; punctuality of, 273 ; women and 
their educational influence, 294; 
classes of professional, 305-306 ; and 
the world of affairs, 306-307 ; poverty 
o^> 357 ; tenure, 366 ; treatment of, by 
nation, 373. 

Teaching, art of, 57; as a life work, 
268-269 ; profession, peril of, 272 1 as 
a profession, 347. 

Temptations, of the superintendent, 
146-149. 

Tennyson, quotation from, 132. 

Tenure, of office, of superintendent, 137- 
138 ; and effects of, 146-147. 

Tenure, 341 ei seq., 366. 

Terms of office, of board of education, 
28-30 ; of superintendent, 29-30. 

Text-books, free, open or uniform list, 
71-72 ; 85-87 ; commissions, 245 (foot- 
note) . 

Time, of superintendent, how spent, 97- 
98 ; amount of, given to subjects in 
the grades, 260; teachers, out of 
school, 262-266, 

Training classes, in high school, for 
teachers, 196-197. 

Trustee, school, authority of, 47; in- 
fluence on authority of boards of 
education, 47. 



434 



INDEX 



United States, bureau of education of, 
and local schools, 8 ; education in the, 
219; money spent for education in 
the, 313-314; wealth of, 373. 

Universal school, The, justification of, 
221-224; characteristics of, 225-228. 



Vacation schools, in summer, 197; the 

long, 425. 
Vacancies, desirable, 331 et seq. 
Visitors, to school, value of, 120-121. 



Voters, in a community, and the super- 
intendent, 291. 

Votes, pledging of, by board members, 
80-81. 

Wealth, 358; 373. 

Women, as members of board of educa- 
tion, 13, 15; as principals, 181-183; 
as teachers, 269; and the educational 
life of a community, 292, 294; in- 
fluence of, on salaries, 295. 

Wilson, James, quotation from, 240. 



